Bill to Ban Restaurant Salt Has New Sponsor in Albany
By Darryl McPherson
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| Budding fascists? Legislators Felix Ortiz (below) and Eric Adams (above) want to tell you how to eat. They aren't worth their salt as men. They have lost their savour, are good for nothing and should be trodden under foot and cast out of office. |
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State Assemblyman Felix W. Ortiz, Jr. (D-Brooklyn) recently proposed legislation to prohibit restaurants from using salt when they prepare food. The bill would authorize the State Attorney General to go to court and get an injunction against any restaurant found putting salt in their food.
This means that the Como Restaurant, for instance, not only could not put any salt in their spaghetti sauce, or any of their dishes, they could not even use salt to boil the pasta.
The restaurant could be fined $1,000 for each violation found.
Ortiz's justification for this bill cited a World Health Organization study that said three quarters or more of the sodium intake in the United States was from processed or restaurant food, and that if we ate less salt, we could have fewer heart attacks and deaths per year.
What does the World Health Organization think, by the way, about meat, sugar, butter, oil, fried foods, alcohol, coffee, caffeine, soda? Following the logic that whatever the World Health Organization deems unhealthy should be illegal is a path to the creation of new food police in this nation, a restriction to liberty and the end of restaurant dining as we know it.
Ortiz also justified his no-salt law on the deeply emotional personal basis that his father suffered a heart attack, which Ortiz said was caused by his dad frequently eating at restaurants that used too much salt in their food.
Ortiz is suggesting that his father was not competent enough to decide for himself what food to eat and where to eat it and because Jr. is an elected official, and Jr. failed to look after his father’s diet, it should now be up to our state legislature to ban salt from food preparation in restaurants.
There are many problems with his proposed law.
Is salt one of the secret herbs and spices in Kentucky Fried Chicken?
Would the law also ban the Food Network from using salt on television?
Potato chips, popcorn and peanuts - will we not be allowed to eat them at movies or sporting events in New York?
How about hot dogs, salami and other prepared meats made with salt?
What about salad dressing? How about salt water taffy? Chicken wings? French fries?
What about salt water fish?
Would salt on the rim of a Margarita glass be illegal? Who know? But then maybe food nanny Ortiz could find some relative who died from drinking alcohol and make that illegal, too.
As to facts, how does he know that his father suffered a heart attack because his food was over-salted, and that he did not have another malady that caused his condition?
Even if he did die from too much salt, so what? People die from alcohol and tobacco every day. What does the World Health Organization say about this?
Why isn't Ortiz trying to ban alcohol at restaurants and tobacco everywhere?
The first time around, thankfully, the Ortiz bill did not pass, but New York being what it is, you can’t keep a bad idea down.
On Jan. 28, State Senator Eric Adams (who apparently does not salt his food either) has reinstated the salt ban proposal, though Ortiz has yet to sign on in the Assembly.
When is enough, enough?
Are free people to be dictated to like children?
Why should any of us listen to a government bureaucrat on how to prepare our meals?
True, the no-salt bill failed the first time through the legislature, but there are no guarantees that it will not pass another time. If someone was foolish enough to reintroduce it, there will be others foolish enough to support it.
The next time you dine out, take a moment to think about what you are eating and how it tastes. Then ask yourself, who else is asking that same question?
