Last month it was a NY State Assemblyman asking to regulate the amount of salt in foods.

Now it’s the whole FDA:
FDA plans to limit amount of salt allowed in processed foods for health reasons, since you’re a helpless child who can’t even figure out how much salt you need. Note the Orwellian language (emphasis added):

The Food and Drug Administration is planning an unprecedented effort to gradually reduce the salt consumed each day by Americans, saying that less sodium in everything from soup to nuts would prevent thousands of deaths from hypertension and heart disease. The initiative, to be launched this year, would eventually lead to the first legal limits on the amount of salt allowed in food products.

The government intends to work with the food industry and health experts to reduce sodium gradually over a period of years to adjust the American palate to a less salty diet, according to FDA sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the initiative had not been formally announced.

Officials have not determined the salt limits. In a complicated undertaking, the FDA would analyze the salt in spaghetti sauces, breads and thousands of other products that make up the $600 billion food and beverage market, sources said. Working with food manufacturers, the government would set limits for salt in these categories, designed to gradually ratchet down sodium consumption. The changes would be calibrated so that consumers barely notice the modification.

The legal limits would be open to public comment, but administration officials do not think they need additional authority from Congress.

“This is a 10-year program,” one source said. “This is not rolling off a log. We’re talking about a comprehensive phase-down of a widely used ingredient. We’re talking about embedded tastes in a whole generation of people.”

Of course, if they must regulate the amount of salt in food effectively, they would have ban the use of salt shakers in restaurants and public places, even when, as Ed Morrissey explains,

According to the latest research, sodium intake isn’t really a health problem for normal adults. An Einstein University study in 2008 showed no connection between cardiovascular disease risk and higher-sodium diets

Never mind the facts (hey, maybe it’ll create jobs!); give it time and the FDA will insist you get a prescription in order to use one of these:

I’ll be in Rick Moran‘s podcast tonight at 8PM Eastern to talk about this and other political items.

UPDATE
Nanny isn’t reasonable.