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Bill To Ban All Salt In Restaurant Cooking
lord_rotorooter writes "Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, introduced a bill that would ruin restaurant food and baked goods as we know them. The measure (if passed) would ban the use of all forms of salt in the preparation and cooking of food for all restaurants or bakeries. While the use of too much salt can contribute to health problems, the complete banning of salt would have negative impacts on food chemistry. Not only does salt enhance flavor, it controls bacteria, slows yeast activity and strengthens dough by tightening gluten. Salt also inhibits the growth of microbes that spoil cheese."
Do you really want the government telling you what you cannot eat?
Stay out of my bedroom, welcome to my kitchen?
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
Salt is a dietary requirement. If you don't get enough salt in your diet, you get sick and die. Limiting salt levels in foods, rather than an outright ban, might make sense. However, I expect the only result would an increase in the number of people carrying personal salt shakers when they eat out.
Ortiz admits that prior to introducing the bill he did not research salt's role in food chemistry, its effect on flavor or his bill's ramifications for the restaurant industry. He tells me he was prompted to introduce the bill because his father used salt excessively for many years, developed high blood pressure and had a heart attack.
Reacting emotionally is how bad laws get written and passed.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
All politicians are idiots! More at 11.
There, fixed that for you.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
“I think salt should be banned in restaurants. I ask if a dish has salt in it, and if I does, I get something else that doesn’t have salt,”
Correct me if I'm wrong but a large number of the chemicals that make up food are salts of one type or another. What exactly does he eat?
The above comments are the ravings of a lunatic and should be ignored completely.
The problem isn't this bill, which won't pass. The problem is that bad ideas like this, once introduced, have a life of their own. They keep getting reintroduced until they do pass. (good ideas, on the other hand, get shelved and are never heard from again).
They've already assaulted baked goods by banning trans-fats (certain baked goods need shortening for texture). Ruining everything else, even with a watered-down anti-salt bill, is now inevitable.
Trans fats are an artificial substance that occur primarily due to anti-fat hysteria. In mindlessly fleeing from animal fats, we managed to create something 10 or 100 times worse.
In this respect, it's a little less absurd to try to ban it.
There should just be accurate labeling across the board.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This is a great example of the knee-jerk reaction process that the government employs.
Creating overreaching laws and rules for everyone is very rarely the solution to a problem.
LOL...No. His father killed his father. (Just in case you weren't being sarcastic)
Sent from your iPad.
Exactly. The obviously ridiculous bills (e.g. DMCA, PATRIOT Act, NY State Budget) never get passed.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
No, nothing needs to be done.
The government has no business whatsoever dictating what restaurants can and cannot have (never mind must have) on their menus. If you can't eat something, don't eat it ... if that means not going out to eat, well that's your issue. Restaurant owners are not responsible for your health, you are.
Christ, what the hell happened to personal responsibility?
Who pays this idiot's salary? (And does he know where the word comes from?)
Liberty in your lifetime
I was having a similar discussion with my husband the other day when he was discussing how he wants some government regulation on those types of products that claim to provide male enhancement or are diet supplement pills that supposedly burn fat just because someone took the pill. He feels that people should be able to trust what companies advertise.
I pointed out to him, that right now our leaders feel any regulation should always go to the extreme. This is a prime example of going to the extreme. This is what this representative is proposing, the extreme.
Without some salt in foods, food will not stay preserved as long, and many other bad things will take place. This has the potential for increasing the cost of meals at restaurants because food will not last as long, which then means more deliveries or purchases will need to be made for a restaurant to keep up with the shortened lifetime of the food supply used to prepare the meals. This increases our carbon footprint for all of these service industries to meet the new regulation. And if this is only done in one area of the country or one state, now fast food places have to make separate batches of food for the consumers and if one batch is mistakenly sent to a No-Salt location, what are the ramifications then? Would people sue the restaurant because, OMG, I just ate salt...? Possibly, maybe even likely.
I completely agree, less salt is better, but an outright ban? Ridiculous! Regulations are in place by the FDA, correct? If companies are not following the regulations in place already go after them. Enforce existing rules and regulations first, and staff up to meet the needs of enforcement. If after regulation it is found that changes need to be made, tweak the regulations.
We need less govt. intervention. Govt. leave my food alone.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
This is inevitable. Not only will we see more of this, but it's going to get a lot more invasive. Politicians have decided it's their responsibility to look out for our well-being.
What does everyone think the president and congress is talking about when they say we need to change how we live, that we need to practice preventative healthcare? They're going to cram this sort of thing down our throats.
Every so often someone mentions us sacrificing our freedoms for the sake of security. But inevitably it's always mentioned in relation to the war on terrorism. The real threat to our freedom isn't anything so overt. Wars are temporary and there are plenty of people fighting these overt threats. The real threats to freedom is legislation like this. They're far more subtle, more far-reaching and long-lasting and it's the sort of thing that is harder to defend against because it's pretty easy to argue it's for our own good.
Twenty years from now people might be able to repeal invasive surveillance policies because the terrorist threat has subsided if not outright disappeared. But how do you repeal these kinds of bans? You're repealing a ban on something unhealthy! You're going to raise the cost of healthcare! We can't have that!
The real tool here should be education. People need to understand what they're consuming and the effects it may have on their bodies. Then they make the decision. But they should also be held responsible for their actions. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be realistic in this day and age either. Now, I'm not so naive as to believe that we can have a complete libertarian free-for-all where anything goes. But I'm talking about basic personal freedoms here. Pig out on unhealthy food all your want, but be prepared to deal with the health issues you're likely to encounter later in life.
People want the freedom, but they don't want to deal with the responsibilities and consequences of those freedoms. It creates the perfect atmosphere for the government to step in and make these decisions for us. That's really what it comes down to. Either we live safe, secure lives free of major responsibilities but have to give up many of our freedoms, or we have our freedom but we have to deal directly with the consequences of our actions. Unfortunately too many people nowadays seem to have the delusion that we can enjoy the best of both worlds.
Maybe if everyone stopped crying about elitism when people suggest that we elect smart people to run the country, we wouldn't be having this problem.
Sadly, stupidity seems to be bi-partisan.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Why don't we just make it a Federal crime to elect a fucking moron?
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
No, no, no. Salt was only a symptom of the underlying problem. Don't you see? This person had a *heart attack*, a HEART ATTACK. Clearly we must ban hearts so as to prevent more attacks of this nature. Anyone with a heart must be kicked out of New York State!
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Why is banning the solution to everything? I don't get it. People love to ban anything with legislation, it's completely illogical.
I'm guessing you don't work with many engineers.
Rather than mod you down for what is likely an innocent mistake, I will just point to his bio on http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.org, which doesn't mention nuclear engineering. I know he "trained for the position of engineering officer in submarine USS Seawolf, then under construction." and "Carter completed a non-credit introductory course in nuclear reactor power at Union College starting in March 1953" from reading his wikipedia page but that isn't the same thing.
While he is familiar with some aspects of being a of nuclear engineer, he is far from actually being one. Thought you might want to know. And yes, while he is probably a nice guy, he was arguably the least effective president in the last 100 years, so he usually isn't a good example to hold up for any comparison.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!