NY Bill to Prohibit Use of Salt in Restaurants

In this Bill introduced to the NY State Assembly on March 5, the sponsors Assemblyman Ortiz and Assemblywoman Markey propose a law that would prohibit restaurant workers from using any salt while cooking.  Under the law, salt would still be available in restaurants, but only for customers to apply at their own discretion.  The justification for this law is that it would give customers more control over the amount of salt in their food and that reduced salt in food would translate into less heart attacks.

This Bill seems quite extreme.  Certainly fast food and packaged foods have too much salt in them, but salt is an important part of cooking from scratch as well.  The proper seasoning of food with salt make it taste better.  It is often helpful to add salt throughout the cooking process and not just at the end.  The fact that this bill targets all restaurants seems inappropriate.  I doubt this would pass into law--perhaps it is to be used as a tool to draw more attention to the issue and to get food producers to voluntarily reduce the salt content of their prepared foods.