The most overused word in the bansturbators lexicon

And that word is 'could' it's frequently used in odd statistics to try and justify something being done which cannot be proven to be true under any circumstances.
Express.

25,000 lives could be saved if we cut salt
REDUCING the amount of salt we eat could save 25,000 lives a year, health experts said last night.
Deaths from heart disease and strokes would dramatically fall if shoppers checked the ingredients of everyday foods like bread and cereals.
Doctors blame the high levels of salt-laden processed foods we eat for pushing up blood pressure levels, raising the risk of heart disease.
They say most Britons have no idea how much salt they consume, or what the guideline amounts are.

These are pretty much the same group of people who came up with the alcohol unit recommendation, by plucking figures out of thin air remember?
Salt is necessary, the amount of salt in our blood equals that of seawater and this is no coincidence as evolution should you believe it infers that we descended from marine life, it's pretty much the same for all mammals, too much, you might die eventually, too little and you die quicker. Reducing your salt intake to zero as some idiots will try will actually kill you. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (May 4, 2011), reported that among 3,681 study subjects followed for as long as 23 years, the cardiovascular death rate was more than 50 percent higher among those on who consumed less salt. So using an actual scientific test for comparison it appears that doctors and the government in the UK are recommending a course of action that will actually kill us quicker than hypertension which might (just might) be exacerbated by salt but which salt doesn't actually cause. (Stress and misery are far more likely along with a genetic tendency to hypertension)
I have high blood pressure, my doctor and her nurse continually check it and recommend ever higher doses of something which might bring it down (no luck yet) Yet I feel perfectly healthy if a little old these days and when checking my diet they found I'm actually eating far healthier than they apparently do.
So junk science is being used with the word 'could' to try and justify ever greater intrusions into our lives by legislation which the cost of which will be passed onto us.
Perhaps when reading the word 'could' we should substitute 'probably will not' instead...