Albany has now become the latest front in the war to drag us all, kicking and screaming, into state-mandated good health. Assemblyman Felix Ortiz of Brooklyn has decided it’s not enough that the government is banning trans fats and possibly taxing into oblivion the sugar that, Ira Stoll has pointed out, the government subsidizes to start with.

Mr. Ortiz has now introduced a bill that would establish, as a matter of law, that “No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off of such premises.”

Should a restaurateur be caught with his hands in the salt-box, he stands to be fined a cool thousand for each such transgression.

I guess Mr. Ortiz wants to guarantee that the tasteless but “healthy” fare served up in school cafeterias to children be imposed on their parents as well. Only problem is that there is little evidence that salt intake causes any health problem in most people. There are people who are sensitive to salt, and their blood pressure may be adversely affected by salt intake. They know who they are, and if they don’t, they should. You can get your blood pressure checked, for free in all sorts of places like pharmacies and the like, and for less than $50 you can buy a device to check your blood pressure anytime you want this information.

For the rest of us, the vast majority of us, there is no need to take the cure for someone else’s ailment, particularly at the behest of others who propagate this idiotic and dangerous type of mass hysteria. And Mr. Ortiz, so eager to regulate the work of chefs, clearly has no understanding of their use of salt.

One could start, for instance, with the use of salt in the koshering process for meat and poultry. The plain language of his bill suggests koshering may be forbidden. Certainly the use of salt to “brine” turkeys or pork, an often-used technique to keep the meat moist and flavorful, would be precluded.

In some foods, such as salt cod or bacala, salt is used as a preservative and takes the fresh fish and alters it into an ingredient that has unique and delicious flavors. What will happen to the bacala that many Italian Americans serve at the traditional Christmas Eve “Feast of the Seven Fishes”? Will it fall victim to Assemblyman Ortiz’s culinary crusade?

So extreme is the Ortiz bill that the assemblyman was forced to backpedal, furiously, just a day after the scheme hit the newspapers. “My intention for this legislation was to prohibit salt as an additive to meals. If salt is a functional component of the recipe, by all means, it should be included. But when we have meals prepared by restaurants that pile unnecessary amounts of salt, we have a problem.”

In a way, this revision is even worse, potentially having government agents monitor cooking techniques and making subjective judgments as to how much salt is a “functional component” of a meal, or is “unnecessary.”

The Ortiz bill specifically doesn’t ban the use of salt at the dining table, even in restaurants, and my observation is that there are many people who add prodigious amounts of salt to everything they eat, much more than in the preparation of the food itself. What will the salt cops do with them? Will they be put in salt prison?

This time around the Ortiz initiative is being greeting with derision. But who could have predicted that for two years running, the governor of New York, the mayor of the city and many legislators would seriously consider a huge tax on soft drinks that use the sugar the government subsidizes? The Ortiz proposal may be deep-sixed this year, but what will next year bring?

One prediction is that it will morph into a “salt tax,” much like the soda tax being so seriously considered, endorsed by the governor, Mother Bloomberg, and others who see in food and drink the same kind of governmental gold that they once saw in that well-known herb known as tobacco.

This is where the health hysteria collides with the appetite of government for remaining the cash you may still have left in your wallet. The tax on soda, a penny an ounce, would raise the price of a two-liter bottle of Coke or Pepsi by nearly 68 cents, which would increase the price of those bottles by a whopping 50 to 75% depending on the regular price at your local store. Same for Dr. Pepper or Seven-Up or even the sainted Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray, so beloved as the accompaniment to a hot pastrami sandwich on rye with mustard. That is, if we’re still allowed to eat pastrami, what with all the salt and delicious fat.

The real losers in all this will be thousands of businesses all over the state. Will millions of soda drinkers who live near the state border simply bring their soft drink business to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and even Canada? If you’d like to buy the world a Coke, won’t you be smart to do it in the Garden State, and save a pile of cash?

Do you think customers will confine their out-of-state shopping to just soda, or buy all of their groceries elsewhere? How many New York businesses will close their doors and how many jobs will be lost? If we begin to regulate the ingredients that restaurants are allowed to put in their offerings, might our top chefs look to places where they can practice their craft without interference by the nannies of Albany and City Hall?

In the meantime, try this recipe now, while you can:

Spicy Bacala all’Nanny d’Albany

3 tbs. extra virgin olive oil

2 pounds of salt cod (bacala) – try to find pieces of similar thickness – available from any good fish monger

1 onion, roughly chopped

½ – ¾ cup pitted black olives (such as kalamatas)

3 tablespoons capers

1 large can (28 oz.) imported Italian San Marzano tomatoes, drained and chopped

1/3 cup dry white wine (try to find a Sicilian wine such as Nero D’Avola- drink the rest with your fish)

1 tsp. dried hot red pepper flakes, or more to taste

Fresh parsley, chopped, more for garnish

Preparation: salt cod must be rinsed and reconstituted. Place in a large container, in ice water and keep in refrigerator for 36-48 hours, changing the water frequently, at least 4 times a day. Cut reconstituted fish into convenient sized pieces. Rinse capers.

Heat oil, add onions, capers, olives and hot pepper flakes. Sauté until onions are softened, maybe 5 minutes. Add tomatoes, stir and sauté another 5 minutes. Add tomato liquid and wine, bring to a boil and simmer for five minutes more. Add fish and simmer gently for 20 minutes. Add parsley.

Serves 4, can be served over rice, orzo pasta, cous-cous or polenta.