It was easy to Twitterize NYMag’s story by a usually smart writer doing his part for the salt package by eating badly for nine days: “The man who mistook grease for sodium.” Please. Salt does not give you zits, or stomach cramps. You do not need to over-ingest cheeseburgers to abuse the stuff. You don’t even have to combine it with fat to fuck yourself up. Just open up a can of MSG-free soup. My stomach cramped as I was thinking about how the media is no smarter about nutrition fads than it was back when I got sucked into the fat-fearing insanity simply because the Snackwells ads were paying the magazine bills. I always used to say nutrition is an infant science (never say it to a dietician at a party), but Michael Pollan is even harsher. The salt crusade is just misguided, and the media is just playing the same role it did in the run-up to the Iraq War. But they need the eggs. Like the ad for a “doesn’t get better than this” sandwich that contains half a day’s sodium allowance in one too-dainty-for-a-construction-worker handful. I grew up watching my dad eat salt out of his hand to settle his stomach, before he could afford Tums. His kids all developed a taste for salt on cantaloupe. Six of us are still standing. No one with ads to sell is going to tell you salt is not an issue if you cook your own food. For all the bitching about the nanny state, someone needs to stop the enablers. Which is a funny thought now that the old-media blogs are the new salt mines. And I doubt they will even get the tagline on that ad: “Oh goody, it’s Monday.” We are living in a 24/365 world. It’s too late to demand: “Give us salt or give us liberty.”