Is Salt Bad? A Prison Study May Hold the Answer

There is a lot to fight over in the vagaries of dietary science, but possibly nothing has been as contentious or as longstanding as the salt wars. For decades, public-health officials have pushed people to eat less salt, which is linked to lower blood pressure, which in turn is linked to less heart disease. And for the same decades, a vocal opposition has challenged the guidelines as unscientific: No solid evidence directly links salt intake to heart disease over the long term.

The vitriol of the salt wars was on display in The journal noted that one side took an article as “compelling evidence of the value of reducing sodium intake,” while another said the same article “reads like a New Yorker comedy piece” and was the “worst example of a meta-analysis in print by a long shot.” That was 1998. The evidence hasn’t gotten much better since