When I was poking around the Web earlier for interesting takes on today's obesity topic, I sent an e-mail to my friend Mike Fumento, asking if he'd seen the L.A. Times story we linked to. Mike wrote an excellent book 10 years ago called The Fat of the Land, which was one of the first to tackle the politics, prescriptions and personalities surrounding America's obesity epidemic. He's kept abreast of the subject ever since. Here is Mike's reply, which he graciously gave me permission to post here

I was laying on the couch in a lazy one-more-day-till-school-starts funk, enviously watching the Food Network wishing I could afford to cook lobster rolls and roasted loin of pork when I noticed that several of the recipes demonstrated called for sea salt. I began to wonder how many people use sea salt, kosher salt, or another variety of gourmet salts; because the salt in my cupboard is good old fashioned Morton's iodized salt. Table salt has been fortified with iodine since the 1920's to help prevent iodine deficiency.