Mexico City tries to get salt shakers off tables

 

Salt and lime with tequila. Salt with your iced "michelada" beer. Salt and chili on fruit and even candy. Mexicans love salt, so much so that some estimates show them eating nearly three times the recommended amount and significantly more than what Americans put down.Add this to rising obesity and a hypertension epidemic, and you have a potential health nightmare that has spurred Mexico's massive capital city to try to get residents to shun the salt shaker.
Mexico City Health Secretary Armando Ahued launched a campaign, dubbed "Less Salt, More Health," late last week to get restaurants to take salt shakers off their tables. Officials and the city's restaurant chamber signed an agreement to encourage eateries to provide shakers only if guests ask for them. The program is voluntary but the chamber is urging its members to comply.
The anti-salt campaign is part of a growing wave of activism by mayors such as New York City's Michael Bloomberg , whose administration has nudged food manufacturers to reduce salt and promulgated voluntary salt guidelines in 2010 for various restaurant and store-bought foods. Bloomberg has also tried to cap the size of non-diet sodas and other sugary drinks, but a court struck down the beverage rule just before it was to take effect last month. The city is appealing.