Menos Sal, Más Salud

Mexico City’s secretary of health, Armando Ahued, recently launched a “less salt, more health” (menos sal, más salud) campaign, urging restaurants to remove salt shakers from tables.  The Atlantic Cities post about the campaign compares it to Bloomberg’s recently overturned soda ban, but the Spanish version in el Nuevo Heraldo points more specifically to Bloomberg’s 2010 campaign to reduce salt both in packaged foods nationwide and in foods served at the city’s restaurants.

Both cities’ salt-reduction efforts may signal new strategies among mayors to promote healthy behaviors among their residents.  However, the distinction may be important, as well.  Whereas Bloomberg’s salt campaign was directed at restaurants and food companies, both New York’s soda ban and Mexico City’s removal of salt-shakers are bolstered by the idea that social transmission plays a key role in a person’s health behaviors.  In other words, when we see people drinking large sodas or adding salt to their food it affects our own perceptions of what’s normal behavior. As a result, the argument can be made that limiting the size of the soda, although not the quantity of sodas one can purchase, and restricting the placement of salt shakers, although not one’s ability to request a salt shaker, will still lead to decreased soda and salt consumption by the population as a whole.

However, where the soda ban may have failed, Mexico City’s salt initiative may still succeed.  The second half of the campaign’s title, “más salud” points to its public education component.  Reports announcing the campaign highlighted the public health message: above average salt intake is leading to a host of health problems for many Mexicans.  It’s likely that soda companies are better organized and more influential than salt companies, but even the powerful tobacco companies were unable to prevent eventual smoking bans in New York and much of the United States.  Perhaps if the soda ban had included a stronger public education component, convincing New Yorkers of its health value, its opponents would not have prevailed.

Tile image by nunavut.

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