Health Fascist du Jour

Step forward Sir Nicholas Wald. This man is the director of the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine and thinks that the food we eat is his concern. His wizard idea is to tax the ingredients of fast foods –  and, yes, it’s the usual suspects:

Rather than targeting junk food in general, the tax would be applied to salt, alcohol, sugar and saturated fats, the four major ingredients that contribute most to public health problems. The tax would not apply to the ingredients sold separately.

He is taking a somewhat self contradictory approach –  on the one hand, he wants to raise money and on the other dissuade people from buying the products due to raised prices. The two aims are mutually exclusive. The man is an idiot –  a fascist idiot.

Ultimately, though, it is not up to government or epidemiologists to put pressure on anyone to change their habits. What we eat, how much we eat and its level of effect on our health is very much up to us.

I’d also point out –  as I have before, that this is not a public health issue and therefore nothing to do with epidemiology.

Most affected by the scheme would be fast food, ready meals, soft drinks and alcoholic beverages, but also less obvious products. The salt in bread, for example, contributes a significant amount of salt to the diet.

Again –  as I’ve pointed out –  salt is an essential part of our diet. We would die without it. And this man wants to tax it. Wonderful. It doesn’t matter if there is salt in bread (not that I eat much bread anyway), or that I like to put salt into my scrambled eggs in the morning. A healthy body with functioning kidneys excretes the excess. Too little salt in our diets, that is a real danger of this obsessive war on the substance, is incredibly harmful. Salt is essential for healthy cells. Too little and they are unable to retain their structure, leading to an imbalance of electrolytes and subsequently, death. Unless you suffer hypertension, too much salt won’t kill you –  unless you swallow tons of the stuff. And if you want to, it’s your body to do as you will with. It is nothing to do with Nicholas Wald or the government of the day. It is, frankly, none of their damned business. And any attempts to nudge, nag, cajole or tax me will be met with stubborn resistance. I decide what I eat and how much, not the nanny state.

In the UK, the average intake of salt is around 9g per day. Were that to fall to 6g, it would reduce the number of heart attacks and strokes in the country by tens of thousands, Wald said.

Really? And the evidence for this? Or is it just another unfounded assertion of the kind made by these prodnoses? Tell you what; I’ll continue to eat as much salt as I like and we’ll see what happens, eh? Given that my grandmother lived to well into her nineties and my parents are both well into their seventies on a similar diet, I’m more than happy to take the chance.

I like salt and will eat as much as I damned well please.

Tim also comments.