The salt debate: Not all scientists agree on how much sodium is too much
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Loading... - Joan Davidson
- 26 May 2022
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When Dr. Salim Yusuf began publishing research and commentaries a decade ago suggesting that sharp reductions in salt intake don’t improve heart health, the medical world sat up and took notice.
Not only did the work contradict years of conventional wisdom, but Yusuf is among this country’s most celebrated cardiovascular scientists, an Order of Canada member and one of the top 20 most-cited health researchers ever.
The salt papers were published in some of the world’s foremost medical journals. Much of the attention they attracted, though, was less than flattering.
An international group of scientists recently accused the McMaster University professor and his collaborators of conducting fatally flawed studies, with findings that are further tainted by conflicts of interest with the drug and food industries.
The research has slowed efforts to get people to consume less sodium, a leading trigger of high blood pressure and the harm it causes, they say.
The critics group, led by Dr. Norman Campbell of the University of Calgary, recently took the complaints to a surprising new level, asking Jean-Yves Duclos, the federal health minister, to launch an inquiry into the work by Yusuf and his colleagues and alerting McMaster to its concerns.
Their efforts have not exactly borne fruit. Yusuf was just awarded the Canada Council’s $100,000 Killam prize for research excellence, the agency calling him “among the most accomplished medical researchers in the world.”
The Campbell group demanded that the prize be revoked. It was not. Meanwhile, Health Canada says it never even received the letter asking for an inquiry.
But debate over the issue continues, both sides convinced they’re right, guidelines on heart healthy diets perhaps hanging in the balance.
“They’re making inaccurate and false statements and misleading statements and misinterpretations and they’re not correcting things that are obviously flawed,” said Campbell in an interview. “This is a global aggravation for people who are trying to improve the health of their populations.”
In a paper published last October, he and 24 colleagues from Harvard to Johns Hopkins and the University of London, lambasted the McMaster research. Some scientists have “propagated a myth” that curbing sodium does not steadily reduce cardiovascular disease, they said, while noting pointedly that salt is an important profit-maker for the food industry. Read More...
