The controversy over salt, blood pressure, and public health has seemed endless and intractable. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and the National High Blood Pressure Education Program, among other august bodies, recommend that all individuals, not just those with hypertension, reduce the amount of salt in their diets to lower their blood pressure and improve their health, while a good proportion of the researchers in the field believes such recommendations have not been supported by the data. As a result, an entire field has been mired in acrimony for 4 decades.

On 17 May, Claude Lenfant, director of NHLBI, declared the controversy over. The results of DASH-Sodium, a new NHLBI-funded study to be presented the next day at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hypertension (ASH), had made the health benefits of salt reduction unambiguous, Lenfant said. After the meeting, the controversy showed little sign of abating, however.