The Times not only fanned unfounded fears that cutting sodium is risky, but it failed to inform readers that vanishingly few Americans consume the very-low-sodium levels that the IOM considered.

We are eating way too much salt. And it's killing us. That's the message from two new studies released Thursday, examining the amount of global ...

The world's leading health authorities -- from the American Heart Association to the World Health Organization -- have urged people to cut back on salt (sodium). There simply is no controversy: Medical experts are nearly unanimous that we're eating too much salt.

Yes, they agree, salt restriction may be a good idea if you already have high blood pressure or congestive heart failure. But for the rest of us? Previous scientific research has overestimated the effect of salt intake on healthy people ...

Our salt intake is courtesy of processed foods which have salt engineered into them -- not from our own salt shaker. Nearly 80 percent of the salt in a typical American diet is put there by manufacturers, not us.

The American Medical Association predicts that 150,000 lives could be saved each year, simply by cutting the sodium levels in processed and restaurant foods in half.