Boston Market is a classic example here. They make a big deal about offering vegetables, but all their vegetables taste to me like they've had corn syrup poured over them. Which they probably have.

Butter and salt are not bad for you.

Butter is calorie dense which may make it harder to lower intake.

No food is good or bad, it’s just food. Dose makes the poison, yada yada. Please stop moralizing food choices. Is butter a calorie heavy food that is being overused in restaurants, leading to overeating? I’d say yes. Does that make butter “bad?” I’d say no, still just a food item. It’s amoral. Sodium is an even trickier thing, as overeating isn’t really a calorie thing but can have other adverse impacts.

Putting a little butter on your veggies isn't going to harm anything. Putting butter on some bread and downing 1000 calories of bread or potatoes...that's a different story, but it's not the butter that's causing the overconsumption...it's the carbs.

Is the government lying when they say you should keep your sodium intake below 2300mg per day?

There is a major genetic component when it comes to handling sodium. Some people can eat a huge amount with no ill effects, others are much more sensitive. This is still an area of active research, so take any nutritional guidelines with a grain of salt.

That value could be too low, but keep mind that:

1. 30% of salt intake, according to WHO's reports, comes from bread

2. A lot of salt comes from junk food / ultra-processed food. This is because the brain is wired to seek salt and ultra-processed food is engineered for overconsumption.

Cut the bread and the junk food and you'll actually have a hard time eating enough salt ;-)

When I add salt on my plate, people give me funny looks as if I'm going to die tomorrow, but most of my food is cooked at home and by my own estimates in most days I don't go over 2 g of sodium.

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Most people probably overconsume salt, but that's because of the junk food.

We also have clues that what might matter more for heart health is actually the potassium:sodium ratio.

Whole foods (meat, vegetables, fruits) are high in potassium and junk food is low in potassium. And eating more whole plants can probably balance a higher sodium intake.

But that's the second problem with the junk food that people are eating.

So the dietary guidelines aren't lying... that's basically their way of saying to cut the junk food.

Probably. You pretty much have to read the studies yourself, looking specifically for ways they are fucked up, to find out anything useful in the area of nutrition.