 For decades, sometimes furious battle has raged among scientists over the extent to which elevated salt consumption contributes to death, with one camp calling it a public health hazard that requires vigorous attack, and another claiming the risk of dietary salt excess are exaggerated, even to the point of calling salt reduction probably the largest delusion in the history of preventive medicine. The other side calls this denialism ethically irresponsible, especially when millions of lives are at stake every year. Describe two sides of the debate may be falling to the trap of false equivalency, though. As the superhero sounding world hypertension league points out, there's strong scientific consensus that reducing salt saves lives, and like the climate change debate, most authorities are on one side, with only the industry affected and their paid consultants and a few dissenting scientists on the other. Nearly all government-appointed bodies and nutrition experts who have considered the evidence have recommended we collectively cut our salt intake about in half, described as extreme, though, by those defending the industry. After all, just a small fraction of Americans actually get their sodium intake that low, therefore the scults, the salt skeptics say the human experience for very low levels of sodium consumption is extremely sparse. Extremely sparse the reality is the exact opposite. The human experience is living for millions upon millions of years without Cheetos or a salt shaker in sight. We evolved to be salt-conserving machines, and when we're plunked down into snack food and KFC country, we develop high blood pressure. But in the few populations left that don't eat salt, that continue to eat as much as we have for millions of years, our leading killer risk factor, hypertension, is practically non-existent. And when you take people out of control hypertension and bring them back down to the sodium levels we were designed to eat, the ravages of the disease can even be reversed. So why is there still a debate? If salt hidden in foods kills millions of people around the world, why are efforts to cut dietary salt being met with fierce resistance? Well, salt is big business for the processed food and meat industry. And so, according to the head of the World Health Organization's Collaborating Center on Nutrition, we get the familiar story. Just like the tobacco industry spent decades trying to manufacture doubt and confuse the public, the salt industry does the same. But the controversy is fake. The evidence for salt reduction is clear and consistent. Most of the quote-unquote contradictory research comes from scientists linked to the salt industry. However, it takes skill to spot the subterfuge, because the industry is smart enough to stay behind the scenes, covertly paying for studies designed to downplay the risks. All they have to do is manufacture just enough doubt to keep the controversy alive. The likes of the World Hypertension League have been described as a mere pop-gun against the weapons-grade firepower of salt encrusted industries who looked disdainfully at the do-gooder health associations who erect roadblocks on the path to profits. Lest we forget, notes this editorial in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association, high blood pressure is big business for the drug industry, too, whose blood pressure billions might be threatened should we cut back on salt. If we went sodium-free and eliminated the scourge of hypertension, not only would big pharma suffer, what about doctors? The number one diagnosis adults see doctors with is high blood pressure. Nearly 40 million doctor visits a year. And so maybe even the BMW industry might be benefiting from keeping the salt debate alive.