No salt or white bread/rice please!

I'm sitting in a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf shop in Shanghai reading a story about the salt survey just released in the US. Seems that it confirms what we all suspected - we are getting way too much salt at the restaurants we eat in - up to 4 times too much. Red Lobster, shame on you!

As I type this I'm looking at the remains of an egg-salad sandwich in my peripheral vision. It's at least as hard to get something healthy to eat in Shanghai as it is in America. Local Shanghainese dishes are too oily and sweet and have too much MSG. The Western food eateries are not that much better. Even salads come loaded with creamy dressings - and no, they won't serve without the dressing - must make it up in huge vats the night before? The sandwich I tried to eat was 70% white bread. Try to find whole wheat bread in Shanghai and you'll spend all afternoon. The so-called "whole wheat bread" in the supermarket looks a lot like brown-tinted white bread.

It's as if all the food companies and restaurants on both sides of the ocean were involved in a conspiracy to kill us. If you read the recently-released book "Why Do We Overeat?" like I'm doing now you have to accept the fact that the restaurants aren't really trying to kill us - it's just that we are collateral damage on the way to their profits.