The Tampa Tribune from Tampa, Florida • 15

TBO.com THE TAMPA TRIBUNE SATURDAY, MARCH 31, 2012 NATION WORLD "5 Other Views When dorm-room doors slam Shaking the salt habit alt is cheap, easily available and essential for the function of every. BY AMITY SHUES Bloomberg News ot one like that room. That's what parents of high school seniors are saying to them 'single cell in the body. However, this sparkling white crystal sparked a lot of controversy in the medical field for many years. The final consensus, after a lot of medical and epidemiological studies, boils down to what my grandmother used to say: Too much of a good thing may not be good.

The chemical in salt is sodium chloride. High sodium intakecauses or contributes to high blood pressure (by hold Rao Musunuru The dorm mother will call home in Short Mills to tell mom. "I've got a hotel room," Brenda breathlessly tells Neil. Repression is the villain of "Goodbye, sexual, religious and social. Roth didn't plan it, but the novella turned out to be a weapon in an anti-repression revolution that swept away the fussy parietal rules, as well as decanal authority and, in fact, Radcliffe College itself.

The anti-repression movement eventually yielded the vote for 18-year-olds, the end of the draft and a violent reinterpretation of old laws in favor of a new emphasis on the enforcement of civil and human rights. Most of those who advocated these changes never anticipated their downside. Intimidated by courts and students who preferred colleges advertising freedom, deans and dorm mothers abdicated their authority or disappeared. When students became voting adults, privacy laws shut out parents as well. No one controls what happens in dorms, and those freshmen, who often don't pick tiieir roommates, become especially vulnerable.

Our national emphasis on defining wrongdoing through the legal code hate crimes implies that everything that isn't illegal is tenable in a college community. A student who tapes a homosexual act is guilty of a hate crime, but one who tapes heterosexual sex is only likely to be subject to slow-moving dorm discipline, if that. All victims of video-bullying are equally harmed. The "tragedy of the commons" is an old economic concept. It holds that people will abuse a public resource until that resource is exhausted.

But we also have a "tragedy of the common room" at colleges, where nobody owns the dorm desk or bed, and everybody abuses it. The result isn't "Goodbye, Columbus." It is the anything-goes of bullies on the rampage: "Lord of the Flies." The challenge for parents is to take dorm anarchy seriously. Consider how to help schools reclaim dorms, so students not only don't tape but protect and respect one another. There's got to be a way to do that so it also honors everyone's rights. Civil rights alone don't constitute a community.

There's something creepy about the current situation, in which adults cross their fingers and look away from what transpires at colleges because civil-rights lawyers are on the job there. It's time to aim for an American college room un-crazy enough that an adult, too, might consider moving in. Amity Shlaes is director of the Four Percent Growth Project at the Bush Institute. about 6,000 milligrams) contains 2,300 milligrams of sodium. The average American consumes about 3,400 mg of sodium per day, and many individuals consume that much in just one meal.

According to the American 1 leart Association, if the majority of Americans achieved a daily sodium intake of 1,500 mg a day, we might save an estimated $26 billion in health care costs per year, as a result of about 26 percent decrease in high blood pressure. According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2010, cutting the average daily sodium consumption by 1,200 mg (one-half teaspoon of salt) would prevent up to 99,000 heart attacks, 66,000 strokes and can save up to 99,000 lives a year and $24 billion in health care costs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention endorses the U.S. dietary guidelines, recommending a daily intake of less than 2,300 mg of sodium (one teaspoon of salt) for the general population and only 1,500 mg a day for high-risk people (over age 50, African Americans, patients with hypertension, pre-hypertension, diabetes and kidney disease, which make up 70 percent of U.S. adults).

The National Institutes of Health has been recommending the low-sodium DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet for a long time. The American Heart Association, the American Medical Association and the American Public Health Association have been lobbying Congress for several years for stricter rules, with the help of volunteers, including myself. The Institute of Medicine has gone as far as to recommend that the Food and Drug Administration regulate the amount of salt in commercially prepared food. Personal responsibility comes first. Read the labels and mind the amount of sodium intake.

Food may not taste as good with less salt at first, but it's important to reduce salt intake. Replacing it with herbs, spices and lemon may satisfy your taste buds. Salt may be cheap, hut the adverse health consequences are not. Your health depends on what you put in your mouth. Dr.

Rao Musunuru is a practicing cardiologist in Hudson. In 2007 he was named the "National Volunteer Advocate of the Year" by the American Heart Association. This week has been "World Salt Awareness Week." selves this spring as they send in the new-car-level deposit for their darling's college dorm room and tuition. They're thinking of the recent hate-crime conviction of a student at Rutgers University who secretly taped his roommate having sex with another man. in their room and shared the video.

The roommate subsequendy committed suicide. Most parents quickly tell themselves to move on. After all, there is little chance their child's roommate will be so heinous as to record someone else's private life; there's little chance their child would tape someone else; there's little chance their child would commit suicide. Still, parents hesitate. That's because it is quite possible for their child to land -with a roommate whose activities sexual, social or addictive are hard to take.

For every federal hate-crime case like the Rutgers one, there are hundreds of rotten rooming situations that drive kids to drop out, transfer or simply endure a memorably painful year. And there's precious little anyone parent, child, school can do about it. The best way to explain the American dorm problem is through two novels that many college freshmen and their parents have already read: "Goodbve, Columbus" and "Lord of the Flies'" The first, by Philip Roth, was published in 1959 and treats romance, sex and religion; it even, passingly, involves Rutgers. "Lord of the Mies," by William Golding, came out a few years earlier. It is the story of what school children do when left alone on a deserted island and shows how freedom can quickly deteriorate into bullying, and worse.

"Goodbye, Columbus" is set in New Jersey a half-century ago. In the 1950s, male college students served in the military but couldn't vote, and colleges imposed parietal rules, which kept young men out of women's dorms. Spring was still spring then, too, and there was plenty of romance on campuses. The protagonist, Neil Wugman, a librarian and graduate of the Newark Colleges of Rutgers, courts Brenda Pa-timkin, a wealthy girl from Short Hills and a student at Radcliffe College, Harvard's sister school. Toward the end of the book, Neil is summoned to Boston by Brenda during Rosh I Iashanah weekend.

There is no question of meeting in her Radcliffe room. ing on to the water), which leads to heart disease, stroke and kidney disease. Hypertension is the no. 1 cause for stroke. Excess salt intake is also suspected to increase the incidence of stomach cancer and osteoporosis (by interfering with the calcium balance).

In the United States, there has been a 55 percent increase in the average sodium intake since the 1970s. Salt in food not only adds taste but also serves as a preservative. Nine out of 10 Americans will develop high blood pressure during their lifetime. Also, about nine out of 10 Americans eat more salt than is recommended. The incidence of high blood pressure is.less in the countries and cultures that consume less salt and vice versa.

Sea salt (obtained directly through the evaporation of seawater) has as much sodium (40 percent) as table salt (mined from salt deposits and then processed). Most of the "salt substitutes" have potassium in place of the sodium. Potassium is also important for good health, but excess potassium is dangerous, especially in patients taking other potassium-sparing blood pressure medications and in patients with diabetes and kidney disease (who cannot get rid of the excess potassium). More than 75 percent of sodium in our diet comes from processed and packaged foods sold in grocery stores and served at restaurants and schools. People end up consuming too much sodium, even if they never lift a salt shaker for example, bread, crackers, chips, canned foods, frozen foods, cereals, soups, cheese, lunch meats, etc.

One teaspoon of salt (weighing 2-Day Antiques Buying Event In the Tampa Bay Sarasota Area tla-. III ill Hfc mitt WEIiii 1 1 1 1 1 1 D2012 Jfc'ftKaA-siiHdi fl Mbfrt1 TlSrti''l EtaS WHilWilir-ifl Staff wWJi Oriental Heritages 7 '4 r', V- Yl. i'l i Jiy t- MLK LAWN (USF Tampa) April 5th, 2012 WWW.BULLSRADIO.ORG TWITTER: BULLSRADIOMUSIC FACEBOOK.COMBULLSRADIOLOCALLIVE If reasonable accommodations are needed for disability please call (813) 974-1 001 -wW 3 i I i theTAMPA TRIBUNE TAMPA'S NEWSPAPER Sponsors Vendors, Call: (813) 974-4906 1 III 6 Save on SUNDAYS Coupons Sales Deals to subscribe call (81 3) TRIBUNE.