New York City chain restaurants must now display salt warnings

While the harmful effects of excessive sugar consumption are common knowledge, there is perhaps less awareness about salt. Now, in a first, New York City will make it mandatory to put a warning label on salty fare from sandwiches to salads at chain restaurants.

The city Board of Health voted unanimously on Wednesday to require chain eateries to put salt-shaker symbols on menus to denote dishes with more than the recommended daily limit of 2,300 milligrams of sodium. That's about a teaspoon.

New York is the first US city, and probably the first in the world, with such a requirement, which comes as officials and experts urge Americans to eat healthier. It furthers a series of novel nutritional efforts in the nation's biggest city.

"This really represents, to me, the next step in allowing usable information for our community to make better health decisions," said board member Dr Deepthiman K. Gowda. "My hope is that this impacts not only consumer practices but also impacts the practices of our restaurants."

City officials say they're just saying "know," not "no," about foods high in a substance that experts say is too prevalent in most Americans' diets, raising the risk of high blood pressure and potentially heart attacks and strokes. Public health advocates applaud the proposal, but salt producers and restaurateurs call it a misguided step toward an onslaught of confusing warnings.

"This is another example of the government creating policy based on outdated, incorrect sodium guidelines," Lori Roman, president of the Salt Institute, a trade association for salt producers, said in a statement on Wednesday.

The measure will apply to an estimated 10 per cent of menu items at the New York City outlets of chains with at least 15 outlets nationwide, city Health Department Deputy Commissioner Sonya Angell said. Those chains account for about a third of the restaurant traffic in the city, she said.

The average American consumes about 3,400 mg of salt each day. Only about one in 10 Americans meets the 1 teaspoon guideline.

The vast majority of dietary salt comes from processed and restaurant food, studies show. Consumers may not realize how much sodium is in, say, a Panera Bread Smokehouse Turkey Panini (2,590 mg), TGI Friday's sesame jack chicken strips (2,700 mg), a regular-size Applebee's Grilled Shrimp 'n Spinach Salad (2,990 mg) or a Subway footlong spicy Italian sub (2,980 mg).

Last year, an international study involving 100,000 people suggested that most folks' salt consumption was actually OK for heart health, adding that both way too much and too little salt can do harm (See: Sugar may be more harmful than salt for blood pressure: study). Other scientists fault the study and say most people still consume way too much salt.

Restaurant owners say healthy-eating initiatives should focus on diet as a whole, not on particular ingredients or foods. They want the city to leave salt warnings to federal authorities. The US Food and Drug Administration is working on new sodium guidelines.

In recent years, New York City has pioneered banning trans fats from restaurant meals and forcing chain eateries to post calorie counts on menus. It led development of voluntary salt-reduction targets for various table staples and tried, unsuccessfully, to limit the size of some sugary drinks.

Restaurant representatives criticizing the salt proposal have noted that courts struck down the big-soda ban as overreaching by the health board. But the Health Department says it has clear authority to require warnings.