New NYC anti-salt campaign takes a more level-headed approach

According to Huffington Post, the above is part of New York City's new campaign to make citizens more aware of hidden sodium in their diets. It's a pretty modest little message. Especially considering what they were doing three years ago:

Via nutritioulicious

Via Diets in Review

Those ads drew the ire of the Center for Consumer Freedom (the lobby group for the fast food, meat, alcohol and tobacco industries). Stating that "the 1,300 milligrams of salt in a can of chicken and rice soup is actually less than a teaspoon," they produced this parody ad:

This is the problem with exaggerating the harm in a public health campaign. If you overstate your case, detractors can have a field day undermining your credibility.

That's why I'm happy to see a reasonable approach to salt awareness. The only problem is that the ad, as pictured up top, has no conceptual or visual appeal. It's as if, after the PRmageddon following their recent teen pregnancy campaign, the city's communication heads have dialed it back a little too much.