A tipster writes of traffic trouble in Montclair...
South Mountain Avenue has had a portion of one lane closed south bound the last two mornings, necessitating a cumbersome & time consuming detour down to Valley Road and back up. It would be helpful if driving commuters could get info on upcoming street closings due to road or tree work. For a start, when will whatever the work is that's causing the detour be finished?
Tell us your traffic woes or talk about anything else (and if you see something that's needs fixing, report it here). It's your open thread.
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Comments (71)
the nanny is out of control again.
Salt doesn't kill people, chefs do.
My life has become an endless cycle of unfullfilling work followed by filling dinners and mindless TV watching. Sometimes this humdrum is broken up by the occasional home invasion and stint in my panic room. I'll have to keep one of my guitars down there and a litter box too. The last time we spent two days in there the cats were crapping all over the place!
Frank, should I be worried about you? Why aren't you out biking in this weather?
zero tolerance for salt?
JG,
I've become a recluse and virtual 'shut-in'. When I'm finished with the kilo of blow I found up on Highland Ave., I'll go to rehab and find my way back outside again.
Hee Hee!
No follow up on the Bloomfield Foley Field vote? Why doesn't Baristanet do some real investigative journalism?
I have reformed my ways and joined the Tea Party.
I believe that the government should not be nasty and legislate as a Nanny (if nannies could legislate, that is, ...) (ROC's cleverly crafted, albeit, stolen, wordage, (oh no, ROC is a thief! time for Gehenna to open it's gates-we don't want Yahweh to be too harsh on ROC, now, do we....)
This is especially critical because I don't want any senator singing "Chim Chimney Chim Chimney Chim Chim Cheree" in public. Way too embarassing. Or, for that matter "It's an 'appy 'oliday with Mary" on the taxpayers' dime.
I went out and bought a gun, and a huge American flag decal to paste on the rear window of my Dodge Ram. The eagle too, a great detail.
Now I feel like a real 'merican.
Spiro: You need a Palin-Beck 2012 bumper sticker.
Hmm. No salt seems extreme. Although 30 years of aggressive efforts to reduce sodium intake in Finland resulted in an average 10-mmHg drop in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and a 75-80% reduction in stroke and coronary heart disease mortality.
Sounds like low-hanging fruit for public health improvement to me. Much easier than getting people to stop overeating or exercise more.
http://www.worldactiononsalt.com/evidence/introduction.htm
Mrs M, I would, but my wife would divorce me if I did.
It's pretty silly that I'm procrastinating writing about an article about dyslipidemia by reading about hypertension.
So I'm going to stop and get back to my project now. But if anyone's actually interested in a review of the data on population-based sodium reduction initiatives, this is a good one: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2764755/?tool=pubmed. It's actually quite interesting.
"Much easier than getting people to stop overeating or exercise more."
Oh, I dunno. We could pass a law which basses the amount of food you are legally allowed to order at a restaurant on your BMI.
Or we could pass a law which compels a certain amount of required exercise time per day.
I have low blood pressure.
My doctor, a medical professional, a graduate of one the most prestigious medical schools in the world, has told me to eat more salt.
He said, "You need to make sure you have a bag of potato chips with lunch."
And now Assemblyman Felix Ortiz (D, Bronx), whose medical qualifications are unknown, wants to come between me and my doctor?
These buffoons are really beneath ridicule.
ROC, considering your incessant whining about what you pay in taxes, I'm stumped as to why you'd also complain about potential public health initiatives that could save lives--not to mention billions per year in healthcare spending--with relatively little pain on the part of consumers. Do you *really* think it would make any of your food taste worse if its salt content were reduced by 1/3?
Whether or not we have a formal public health insurance option, we are all already paying for chronic diseases like hypertension and their consequences via our taxes and insurance premiums, so we have a vested interest in reducing the impact of those diseases where possible.
The only people who should have a real problem with sodium reduction initiatives are the salt and processed food industries. Fat, sugar, and salt are the 3 substances that are used to make foods 'irresistable' and encourage conditioned overeating (see former FDA commissioner David Kessler's book for an interesting analysis of this subject: http://www.amazon.com/End-Overeating-Insatiable-American-Appetite/dp/1605297852). Salt is used to create desire not only for processed foods themselves, but also for sweetened beverages.
Incidentally, the French, who take their food pretty damn seriously, have successfully used population-wide sodium reduction programs to reduce hypertension and cardiovascular events.
So ROC... which would you rather pay for with your tax dollars?
A) A (relatively) inexpensive public health program to reduce salt intake that will have enduring health and financial benefits if executed successfully
B)Multi-drug hypertension treatment regimens, hospitalization and continuing care for people who have strokes and other HT-related CV events, additional drugs and dialysis and kidney transplantation for people who develop chronic kidney disease as a result of their hypertension, and on and on and on...
You're already paying for all the stuff listed in option (B) and more. So it's really nonsensical to have such a knee-jerk reaction against public health policies because you perceive them to be 'invasive.' Over the course of decades, more and more policies were put into place to benefit the processed food industry at the expense of public health, but those probably didn't make the news. Do you object to those too? When you react negatively to a newly proposed policy solely because it involves increased oversight, you should really ask yourself what you're implicitly accepting by your refusal to consider it.
All that said, I have no idea why I waste my time typing anything in response to your posts. I suppose it's just part of my masochism, because I know by the time you saw my name on this post your knee was already twitching again. Twitch, twitch, twitch.
WM, you are kidding, right?
A policy to reduce the amount of added salt in manufactured food would not preclude you--a member of a very small minority in this country--from adding more table salt to your own food.
BTW, that article Walleroo linked to @ the start of this thread explains the rationale for reducing salt in manufactured food extremely well.
And now I am really going back to my actual writing *work*. And considering a reduction in my caffeine intake.
Maybe it's the salt, I don't really care; the conditions of the roads in town are abysmal. I almost lost a molar on North Fullerton today... only to make my way to the back lot at Watchung Plaza which is such a wasteland trash-strewn mess the only thing missing is a tumbleweed. (And good thing they dedicated extra spaces for permit parking there, half of which are always vacant, so they can ticket more people and/or discourage patronage of local merchants.) But, by all means Council, ignore these annoyances of infrastructure and dedicate more of my money to nonsense.
No follow up on the Bloomfield Foley Field vote?
It was narrowly defeated.
Thank you for the link. I had thought that broad efforts to reduce salt and high pressure had not been effective.
Do you *really* think it would make any of your food taste worse if its salt content were reduced by 1/3?"
NY is contemplating an absolute ban, Katie not juts a third. But even a third by force of law would make my food taste worse. It would have the bitter taste of tyranny.
I didn't read the rest of your post, so I won't comment.
We only need about one gram of salt per day or one teaspoon. And yes, most Americans eat three times that amount.
That being said, I don't like a nanny state. Unless they've been living in a cave all their lives, most people know that smoking, eating too much salt, eating too much saturated fat, too much sugar, etc., is bad for you. But they still do these things anyway.
So let's say you cut or reduce all the salt in restaurant food. How are you going to police what people do in their own homes? You can't lesgislate good health.
I still think educating people about these things is the way to go. Not everyone will get it but many will. Unfortunately, it often takes a personal crisis (heart attack, diabetes, death of a loved one) to wake some people up but it's not that they didn't know these habits were bad. It takes discipline and behavioral modification.
I for one would not mind if restaurants were forced to reduce (or even eliminate) the amount of salt they add to food. I learned to stop adding it when I first got married (to a man whose father has high blood pressure and who had grown up without it being added to any home-prepared food). After a while, I really noticed the difference - to the point that there are certain restaurants I don't patronize because the food is so salty I consider it inedible.
IMHO, Kate has it right... they can't legislate away your use of table salt - though they could tax it to the point that you might think twice:)
I didn't read the rest of your post, so I won't comment.
And there you have our inestimable ROC. Don't let Kate's factual, well reasoned post get in the way of your rant against 'tyranny.'
Right on, Mike! ROC is such a bastard for not reading every word of that post.
I have a rebuttal to Kate's argument, which I respectfully ask you to read in its entirety and comment on.
Go ahead, I'll wait.
you know if NY did indeed ban all salt, there would be some good outcomes.
1. It would do wonders for the "underground supper club" movement. I imagine speakeasies or maybe "eateasies" with slatted doors and passwords - "psst...sodium chloride".
2. We could finally get some decent chefs to staff restaurants out her in Jersey for the new culinary refugees seeking flavor across the border. I'd call my restaurant "150 over 90"
3. We'd finally have enough reverse tourist traffic to justify cro's financial basis for NJT.
It's not a ban, ROC. It's an initiative to reduce salt intake by 20%. It's not even a third but a reduction of one fifth.
Looney,
ok, walleroo--THAT was funny. :) Like I said, too much caffeine yesterday.
Here's what I don't get about the 'nanny state' arguments: do the people who complain about that feel that the FDA's regulation of drugs represents a 'nanny state'? How about regulations on contaminants in food? I assume that you support regulations like this because they protect your safety.
Taking the example of Finland's 75-85% reduction in stroke and coronary heart disease mortality following public efforts to reduce salt consumption--you may not be too familiar with typical outcomes in cardiovascular drug clinical trials, but an outcome like this with a drug would be BEYOND extraordinary. A drug that conferred that kind of risk reduction (and with no side effects, even!) would be a mega-mega-mega-blockbuster.
And it's possible we could achieve this kind of result over the course of time simply by educating the public, improving labeling, and working with industry to reduce added sodium in their products (that's what did the job in Finland). That's quite amazing.
Like lots of substances, salt is healthy for most people in appropriate quantities, and toxic in larger quantities. So how would it be any different to regulate the amount of added salt in manufactured food compared with, say, the EPA's requirement that food contain no more than 0.5–2 parts per million of arsenic? Do you consider that a sign of government tyranny also?
BTW, I think it's stupid that the proposed NYC law suggests *no* added salt, and that law will never pass.
To protect citizens from being harmed by others is one of the proper functions of the state. The "nanny" state seeks to protect us from ourselves. That's the difference.
Obviously lots of things we do affect others so obviously that's where it gets tricky. In such cases then, wether or not to regulate has to be handled on a case by case basis.
Banning salt is absurd.
I suggest we round up a good dollop of the salt that won't be used in our food, and instead shake it on ROC.
We can then watch in awe as he shrivels up on the sidewalk.
ROC--my point is that there's a point where food manufacturers cross the line to where they do harm people by adding hidden salt to food. That's more than evident from the vast body of data on the subject.
I make my living as a medical writer. I spend my days collaborating with high-level medical experts to interpret the medical literature and educate physicians. So by training, I can't help forming my conclusions based on evidence and/or lack thereof.
So it's very very hard for me to understand emotion-based arguments like the 'nanny state' complaint that have absolutely nothing to do with the real world. In case you hadn't noticed, ROC and MM, there's an epidemic of chronic disease (obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia, CVD) that is costing lives and billions upon billions of dollars. The attitude that reasonable regulation of the food industry represents tyranny is absurd; 30 years from now if people are still on the planet, I predict that we'll view today's food industry the same way we now view the pre-1970s tobacco industry.
By attempting to conflate the realities of modern health issues with government 'tyranny,' you're fiddling while Rome is burning.
Well why stop with salt? Sugar in large quantities is just as bad for you (ask any endocrinologist). Dairy is also a controversial food. And what about alcohol? Oh, I forget...been there, done that.
The bottom line is that most of us are adults with brains in our heads and can make our own decisions about what we eat. If I am watching fat and salt, I'm not going to be eating too many meals at McDonald's. Most restaurants today--even diners--have ample menu choices for people with all kinds of dietary issues. For example, lots of Chinese restaurants now offer steamed meals instead of sauteed ones, brown rice instead of white.
I'm a big label reader. If something has high fructose corn syrup in it or too much sodium, it does not come into my home. Needless to say, we make a lot of our own food.
Like a slug, croi?
"ROC--my point is that there's a point where food manufacturers cross the line to where they do harm people by adding hidden salt to food."
Hidden salt? It's right there on the package!
Characterize it however you will katie but the moment we, by force of law, start enforcing a healthy lifestyle on people we engage in tyranny.
*sigh*
Dude, I can't help living in the real world. You go on fiddling; I'll just keep doing my job and hope that good education can overcome passive and/or willful ignorance.
Hidden salt? It's right there on the package!
This is talking about food prepared in restaurants, where there is no 'packaging.'
"ROC--my point is that there's a point where food manufacturers cross the line to where they do harm people by adding hidden salt to food."
Just a parting thought--I can't help wondering what people who've suffered under true gov't tyranny (eg, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mugabe regimes) would make of your arguments on this. Talk about absurd...
Katie,
well I didn't say it was on par with that. I know qualitative judgements are not your strong suit katie, but to make it easy - let's just say that there are acts of profound tyranny and minor tyranny. I trust you won't need assistance on which this is likely to be.
Acts of profound tyranny often begin with acts of minor tyranny.
yes...what she said.
You know who liked very salty food? Stalin.
In fact, that's not even his real name - it's "Salt" in Russian.
I'm just sad for poor katie. Can you imagine going through life without any salt in your food? Or without the ability or desire to make your own lifestyle decisions?
You know birth control pills increase cancer risks somewhat. I'll bet there are a lot of women who would call the pill's banning some form of tyranny.
Ban salt all you like. Doesn't matter to me.
But if anyone comes after my butter, there will be blood.
You know, I am about this close from saying, if people want to do stupid things, let them! i.e., someone who smokes (and yes, they most certainly DO know that it's STOOOpid) but if they want to die a slow, poisoned lung-cancerish death, let 'em! BUT draw the line on smoking INSIDE a car with Children in the back seat. THAT ticks me off and the driver should pay a humongous fine and have the kids taken away for a day. Similarly, if a biker wants to ride a Harley sans helmet, it's his own brain he's risking!
However there are rules meant to protect Other people's safety, such as ACTUALLY stopping at stop signs. That's different!
Banning salt in a restaurant and taxing sugary drinks is just ludicrous. It is Not the same as the FDA banning Cyanide in food or some such thing.
What if some genius decides that Chocolate contains some bio-flavanoid where if you eat 10 bags of M&Ms a day you will get cancer of the big toe? Suddenly, Chocolate is Banned Forever because people are too stooopid NOT to eat 10 bags of M&Ms every day (no matter how tempting!)
We know what's best for you, Children, don't worry your pretty heads!
This is why bad drivers and foolish pedestrians make me so mad. Nobody thinks things through any more and there is no common courtesy. Hm, should I cross the street at this blind curve, or walk 20 feet over to the signal-controlled crosswalk? Hm, if I tailgate this driver, will she move over so I can weave in and out of traffic like on my Playstation game at home? (Yes these things happened just this morning. And yes, she almost got ran over and yes I caught up with the tailgater because EVERYone catches up eventually, on Route 21!)
p.s. RoC you are right about the Pill, and it's probably only a matter of time, but then who will pay for all those hospital delivery fees!?
ROC, I haven't been called "Katie" since I was 16 years old, and you don't know me well enough to give me a nickname. I'm just sayin'.
Y'know, I've (mostly) learned my lesson about replying to any of profwilliams's posts because I realized he simply enjoys the arguing and that I'm usually just rewarding bad behavior if I take the bait from him.
I suppose I still occasionally reply to your decrees because I enjoy watching you sputter. Call me perverse.
[Although I'd enjoy trying croi's suggestion even better. You free this weekend?]
Spoken like a true Irishman.
sorry Kate. I have in my mind your handle is katiebirdrex.
I would prefer if restaurants were forced to just put nutrition labels next to every item on the menu.
There are probably a lot of people out there who think that a grilled chicken salad with ranch dressing from a restaurant and a Diet Coke are healthy for them.
Even if just 1 out of 10 reads the label then skips the Ranch for Oil & Vinegar and water or tea instead of the Diet Coke it would be worth it.
This way the people who don't care about their health can keep eating whatever they want, the health conscious can be better informed, and Darwinism can take its course.
most fast food places already do this. There is usually a brochure.
Most intelligent people don't really need much help determining that there is lots of fat, butter and salt in most gourmet food.
I think for the most part, the health conscious ARE better informed.
You can always ask for the ranch dressing on the side, too.
Even if every restaurant in New York (or America) cut salt from the menu, that would not solve the problem of all the processed, pre-packaged foods on supermarket shelves everywhere.
Yeah, I thought I'd heard they are printing the labels on Big Macs and I agree that most "thinking" people would assume that a high-end French restaurant is going to be loaded with fat, butter, and salt.
But, how many TGI Fridays, Applebees, etc have sections of their menu that claim to be healthy (usually because of low carb-count, low calorie count, or a low Weight Watchers(tm) score) but don't count sodium or the calorie content of the salad dressing in the equation when deciding what to tell their customers is healthy or not?
Personally, I would rather see an actual nutrition label.
(Then again, when I go to a place like that it's for a "splurge" and I almost always end up getting either the steak or ribs and a few beers.)
those chains you mentioned (and most chains in general) have that information in the restaurant in a brochure or online.
They, perhaps mistakenly, assume adults are capable of asking or looking online.
For small non-chain restaurants it would be an onerous requirement. You can't just "make it up" their recipes would have to be standardized - sort of the end of creative culinary arts.
All just to satisfy idiots who can't think for themselves and need the nanny state to do their thinking for them. Of course, as you point out, many people "splurge" at a restaurant so then the idiots won't ear right on their own, so you need to ban salt, then butter, then oil, then alcohol....
I'd rather live in a world where people are expected and required to think for themselves.
"BUT draw the line on smoking INSIDE a car with Children in the back seat.
Sounds like every day of my youth. Except I was in the front seat. Without a seat belt. But hey, it was the 70's!
THAT ticks me off and the driver should pay a humongous fine and have the kids taken away for a day."
If the fine was less than the cost of a babysitter, Mom would have driven past the cops while honking the horn and shaking her smoke at them.
I'd rather live in a world where people are expected and required to think for themselves.
I agree with ROC's statement, with the caveat that if people choose to live unhealthy lifestyles, the rest of us should not subsidize their health costs. A few years ago, some employers began charging smokers a higher rate for health insurance. Do the same thing based on percentage body fat.
A few years ago, some employers began charging smokers a higher rate for health insurance. Do the same thing based on percentage body fat.
Now THAT is a great idea!
(Just so long as they use percentage of body fat and not the highly inaccurate BMI!)
Don't forget women who choose to have babies, they should pay more for those choices too, they "cost us" a lot more. And mandatory drug testing, if you test positive for any harmful substances then you should pay more for your insurance.
Oh, and athletes who function at a high level - they should pay more. You know exercise in the right amount is good for you, but if you go to far, like professional athletes or people who run in a lot of marathons can have knee issues. We'd have to set maximum levels of allowable exercise.
Oh, and people who choose to live in cities - the asthma rate is off the charts, why should we have to pay for their choice.
Or those that have sex out of marriage, MUCH higher incidence of STD's.
ROC - Health insurance already costs more for women of childbearing age just for that reason. Just because some employers choose to equalize insurance costs across all employees doesn't mean that the cost basis are the same. And if an employer decides to drug test for both safety and health reasons, more power to them.
But instead, lets go the other direction. Let's start charging all people the same for car insurance, regardless of their age or the number of accidents that they have. That Hummer would get pretty expensive to keep on the road if you had to subsidize the 16 year old kid down the street and the guy who gets into 2 wrecks per year.
From a February "Commentary" article in the Journal Of The American Medical Association summarizing over 20 studies of salt in the diet:
It's hard to know what to make of these numbers because the article lacks detail. However, it suggests that the science is far from settled.
I say this as someone who's been on a low-salt diet for 6 years, thinking that at least it would do me no harm. Now I'm not so sure.
Thanks for posting this, crank--it's an interesting perspective on the complexities of the data considering that the only outcomes studies are in patients with CHF. Keep in mind that patients with right-sided heart failure develop edema that leads to impaired kidney function; this disrupts the body's ability to regulate electrolyte balance. So the findings in CHF patients can't be generalized to the general population.
Also--I'm not saying this negate's the author's perspective, but since he does present a strong interpretation of the data it's worth noting the small print: he's on the advisory board for the Salt Institute, a salt industry trade association.
You know who else tried to take salt?!
(one of the scariest things I saw on TV as a kid)
Why do we want to invite more government into our lives? Why do so many people in this community seem to advocate that such minutia be circumscribed by some form of government regulation? It is in fact a growth of tyranny by incrementalism. If they can go so far as to regulate salt in restaurant meals, and people acquiesce to this, the message is that people are sheep and willing to accept such intrusions into how we live. Bad idea. Also food cooked entirely without salt tastes like crap. Obviously you can add it later, until some wise Solon promotes a ban on salt shakers, but why? Hey, the Taliban banned kite flying, television, and music. Sound nutty? We're talking about banning salt. And Stalin, not his real name, means "man of steel" in Russian. The name was adopted to convey his strength. Sadly and alarmingly, he undoubtedly has his admirers on this board.
Hate government regulation, cncrnd?
Imagine, the America of your dreams - no regulation - so now your water is full of mercury, your air full of soot, your lungs full of dying tissue, dead fish floating everywhere- and no zoning-you're enjoying your rocking chair porch next to a refinery - your kids are splashing around in oceans full of medical waste,stepping on hypodermic needles while building sand castles. The sand is black because it's full of tar.
You rattle when you speak, and you spit up blood and lung particles.
You'll be finally proud to be an American patriot who got the government off his back.
KatebirdRex,
Thanks for the add'l details. No time to talk further now but it helps.
Spiro: I think there's a happy medium. Of course I want government to make regulations when it comes to pollution and toxins in our government but I draw the line at telling me what I can and cannot eat.
A few years ago, I was in a diner near the Garden States Arts Center ordering a pre-concert dinner that included a rare hamburger. I was told that state law prohibited them from serving me my burger rare. I thought the waitress was joking with me but no, she was not. I asked to speak to the manager and told him that should anything happen to me, I take full responsibility. I got my rare burger.
I thought the whole thing was absurd and I'd bet the farm that stuff like this doesn't happen in red states.
in our government=in our environment...Freudian slip there!
Dude,
Don't infer that just because I think that banning salt is overreaching that I'm posting from a cabin in Idaho living off the grid. I'm just saying that we don't need a law for every single thing we do. Moses came down from the mount with 10 commandments, not thousands. And whose post sounds like they're foaming at the mouth?
I'm with Mrs. M - we need a healthy amount of regulation, not more, not less.
I want to know that my all beef patty at Burger King isn't someone's dog or goat. If I were a smoker, I'd want to know that the leaves in my cig were tobacco and not a bunch of filler from Liz Cheney's ranch.
On the other hand, I don't want to have my hands tied by excess regulation.
And don't change the subject cncrnd, the point is not who foams at the mouth ( your foam was pretty foamy, Mr. Black Kettle) but the self-serving dishonesty shown by the nut jobs who got you thinking that regulation = Stalinism in the first place.
Just one more thing on the subject:
The ironic thing about my burger story is that there was more regulation in that New Jersey diner than there was on a federal level, concerning the cattle industry. Ordering a rare burger in a diner wouldn't even be an issue if there were better regulations at the federal level regarding e. coli management and how our beef is farmed and processed.
I read lots of things on blogs that astonish me.
This, from cncrnds post is right up there:
Sadly and alarmingly, he undoubtedly has his admirers on this board.
He's referring to Stalin.
Wow.
Someone needs a hug.
Or a cheeseburger.