High-Blood Pressure

Stop me before I kill myself. Despite taking blood-pressure medication, I ate two incredibly-salty "Big Grab" bags of Fritos just ten minutes ago, and now I read this:

Despite advisories to take it easy on sodium, Americans are now consuming about 4,000 milligrams a day -- nearly double the recommended limit to keep blood pressure under control, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) said.

So the CSPI renewed a lawsuit first filed in 1983 to ask federal courts to force the Food and Drug Administration to declare sodium a food additive instead of categorizing it as "generally recognized as safe." This would give the agency the authority to set limits for salt in foods.

"There is no way the FDA can look at the science and say with a straight face that salt is 'generally recognized as safe,"' CSPI executive director Michael Jacobson said in a statement.

"In fact, salt is generally recognized as unsafe, because it is a major cause of heart attacks and stroke. The federal government should require food manufacturers to gradually lower their sodium levels."

I was impressed, in 2002, when a French doctor who campaigned against adding salt to processed foods was accused of threatening national security (since food processing is an important French industry, anything that can remotely interfere with it can be construed as a crime against the state):

Scientist Pierre Meneton received a less-than pleased response from the French government when he filed a report on the delicate topic of salt. By attributing 75,000 heart attacks a year to excessive salt intake, and pointing out the French food industry’s opposition to limiting salt in their products, Meneton was added to the swelling ranks of names listed as a threat to national security.His membership to the club came complete with surveillance by secret service agents of him, his family, friends and colleagues, as well as phone taps and interception of cell calls. A leaked governmental memo ordering the surveillance was published in an issue of Le Point magazine.

Salt may be the perfect weapon of mass destruction. Everywhere where there's food, you can find the white crystals!

So what to do know, post-binge? Purge? Nah, the stuff is soluble: I wouldn't get but a fraction of it. I know! Lots and lots of diet cola! Purge electrolytes with fluids (and let's not mention the caffeine, phosphoric acid, and the mysterious phenylalanine)!