DailyDirt: Warnings Are Not Hazardous To Your Health

Cities have enacted laws against smoking, salt, sugar, trans fat... and it's raising awareness of these unhealthy habits. But is it really effective at improving general health? Maybe not. It's difficult to actually measure what effect these health warnings have when the result is essentially a decades-long experiment on participants that aren't monitored that well. However, smoking is down, diabetes is no longer on the rise, and consumption of sugary soda is also down. (NB: It probably wasn't warning labels alone that caused these trends.)

• NYC is starting to require a "salt warning" on restaurant menus for items that exceed 2,300 milligrams of sodium. While sodium intake can contribute to high blood pressure and complications, it's not clear that targeting salt intake alone is a silver bullet for improving health. [url]
• Too much sugar isn't healthy, and there's a surprising amount of "added sugar" in packaged foods. The website sugarscience.org is dedicated to informing everyone about the possible health impact of too much sugar in a diet. [url]
• Food labels warning about trans fat might not actually make us measurably healthier. Eaters gonna eat. But education can't hurt, right? [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our holiday gift ideas for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

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