19 Aug 2014 Nanny State Sodium Suggestions Could Actually Harm People

Consumer rejection of allegedly healthier French fries at Burger King and new medical findings that a low sodium diet may be as unhealthy as high sodium diet created what Sun News host Brian Lilley called a “bad week for food police.”  Jeff Stier, director of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Risk Analysis Division, pointed out that the old maxim of everything in moderation is turning out to be true.  Stier added that the “levels that most of us are consuming don’t harm us” already — despite “government guidelines… pushing for not low, but very low levels” of sodium and that businesses feel pressured to comply through the threat of future regulation.

Commenting on how the campaigns to further-regulate individual behavior often lacks a sound scientific grounding while appearing on the 8/15/14 edition of “Byline” program on Canada’s Sun News network, Stier said:

I think it exposes the fact that the food police, the nanny state, the people who want to use government control to tell us how to live, don’t really care about the science.  They’re driven by this neo-puritanical ideological agenda, and they stick with it even when the science goes the other way.