Sodium

Ate too many nachos? Consider a banana chaser -- your heart might thank you for it. A new study suggests that consuming twice as much potassium as sodium can halve your risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. The study is the first to show that the ratio of these nutrients in your diet matters more than exactly how much you get of either one. The best strategy for good health, experts are quick to stress, is to eat less sodium and more potassium.

Doctors recommend against eating more than 2,300 milligrams of sodium a day. Order a Denny's double cheeseburger and you'll consume 3,880 milligrams in one sitting, almost double the suggested daily allowance of salt. Denny's meals "are dangerously high in sodium," according to a lawsuit filed Thursday by a New Jersey man with the support of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit group active in nutrition and food safety issues.

If there's anything good about putting warning notices on packages of frankfurters, it's that the labels could say: Beware of Dog. A New Jersey lawsuit demanding cigarette-pack-type warnings on hot dogs is mainly a crank case by a veganism advocacy group, the sort of legal action that makes for headlines rather than meaningful consumer protection. That suit -- and another one filed just a day later in New Jersey demanding that Denny's restaurant menus include the sodium content of all its dishes (as well as a warning label about the dangers of salt)

Campbell Soup Co. said it was reducing the sodium in 48 soups to meet government criteria for healthy foods. The 36 ready-to-serve soups and 12 condensed soups for children will have 480 milligrams of sodium per serving. That reduces the sodium in the children's soups by one-fifth, the Camden, N.J.-based company said. Campbell also said it would increase its soup prices by 5% because of the rising cost of wheat. The company will also raise the price of its Prego spaghetti sauces and V8 juices.

Campbell Soup Co. has rolled out a new version of its best-selling tomato soup, promising that extensive research found that it tastes much like the old version. The difference? The new soup has 480 milligrams of sodium per serving, compared with 710 milligrams in the previous formulation. The reduction is part of a drive by the company to follow the advice of health and nutrition advocates and lower the sodium content of its products. Doctors recommend against eating more than 2,300 milligrams of sodium a day. So one serving of soup -- there are 2.5 in each can -- contains 21% of the daily allowance.

Six Harvard University medical researchers were poisoned in August after drinking coffee that was laced with a chemical preservative, according to university officials. In an internal memo first reported in the Boston Herald, the school said the coffee came from a machine near their lab that later tested positive for sodium azide, a common preservative used in labs. After drinking the coffee Aug. 26, the six reported symptoms including dizziness and ringing in the ears, and one passed out. They were treated at a hospital and released.

From the dim beginnings of the human race, people have craved salt. Early hominids sought out salt licks to satisfy their needs. The first agriculturists put it in their bread. As cities and towns began to develop, men established the first trading routes in order to put salt on their tables. In some countries, salt was traded ounce for ounce for gold.

One evening last June at Tucson's Steward Observatory, astronomer Michael Brown set up his equipment to test out an idea about the rings of Saturn. With six hours to kill before Saturn would become visible, Brown pointed the telescope toward Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, where a thin oxygen atmosphere had been discovered a few months earlier. "It was completely whim," said Brown, now a researcher in Caltech's geological and planetary sciences department.