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Essays on herbs, gardening, cooking, food, family life
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and the author: Emmalyn N. Edwards. Thank you
Salt: Enemy Number one
We like to cling tightest to that which isn't good for us, I'm sure of it. We hold onto and massage and work on favorite
scenes that really don't belong in the story at all. We especially love the food that isn't good for us, full of sugar and
salt. I would have thought sugar especially, but really it's more salt. Even the favorite candies tend to be those with
salt as well as sugar--chocolate covered peanuts, for example. Dark chocolate, like red wine and potatoes, has nutritional
value (the whole group is usually undone by their companions) and there are plenty of foods that we should eat (if we ate
everything that was recommended in the quantity that it was recommended, we'd probably all be even more overweight--the recommendations
always assume a more active life style than jobs and lifestyle and all typically allow) but really, the one thing that we
could and should remove from our diet is the one thing that even many supposed health food products still cling to in vast
quantity: salt.
Manufacturers of food are especially horrible about this. Salt has the so-called virtue of enhancing flavor. To manufacturers,
this means that they can put in more salt and less real food and flavoring, less chicken broth and more salt water in their
soups; less tomato puree and more salt water and thickening in their spaghetti sauce, less herbs and spices, less of everything
except salt. Given a choice of watered down broth and salted watered down broth, the vast majority of people will chose the
salted, so manufactures 1) know it works and 2) can say people prefer it, when most of us would really prefer they didn't
water it down in the first place. Would it really cost more than five cents more per can or package to do it right? But
people do watch their pennies more than their salt intake and buy the soup that is 40 percent of the daily recommended salt
intake per child-sized portion.
I'm among those who have too much salt in their diet, though I take conscious effort to watch the intake. For convenience,
we get canned veggies (the cheap brands at the cheap stores don't have a no salt version so we rarely get no salt. We buy
chips, always at least lightly salted. We have a small supply of canned meats for quick prep though few usually cook a real
supper. We buy canned spaghetti sauce. We have lunch meat and cheese in our daily sandwiches, always bad for salt. Still,
I try to pay attention to ho much of these foods fill our day, and knowing how bad they are, avoid it in all the other ways
we can.
The easiest is simply not to add salt to anything. Pasta and boiled potatoes aren't noticeably enhanced by cooking in
salted water. In fact, potatoes will so thoroughly absorb and hide the flavor of salt that they can be used to reduce the
salty flavor of other foods or to remove salt from liquids (remove the potato thus used and toss it away). I am appalled
at how many people use the salt shaker at a restaurant. I've rarely had a restaurant serve unsalted vegetables, pasta, or
other food, certainly nothing that needed extra salt. Unfortunately, one of the other things about salt is that it is addictive.
The palate gets accustomed to a certain amount of salt and craves more in order to notice the flavor, and then more On the
plus side, it is an addiction easily undone. Go entirely salt free for as long as you can stand it (a few days can have a
noticeable impact, though longer is better), then taste a pickle, then a chip. The salt flavor can be overpowering because
it's ridiculously high in many prepared foods, far higher than it used to be before we knew how unhealthy salt was. Isn't
that a kicker?
A more difficult course is to avoid the salty foods. We get less chips than we used to and get the individual serving
size both for variety and to limit our intake to one small bag at a time, though environmentally, it's way too much packaging.
The green way would be to buy a big bag, divvy it up into smaller bags, and reuse the smaller bags. Ham is horrible for salt,
definitely to be avoided or at least eaten in small quantities. Prepared foods are often loaded with salt instead of real
flavor sources. It's far healthier to learn to cook. Many basic dishes are easy to prepare and not necessarily excessively
time consuming though it may take some experimenting to determine what menu fits into your schedule the easiest.
Trying to change ones diet, regardless of how, can be a challenge. it can be made easier on the palate and the old habits
by replacing the salt shaker with a spice shaker. powdered Italian spices make a good substitute. So does garlic powder.
Or use a variety. What the palate usually craves when it craves salt is flavor, and replacing salt with a wider range of
flavors is often very effective at making the change a pleasant one. Instead of adding salt and pepper to roast meat or cook
vegetables, try spices typically associate with sweet foods like ginger and clove, spices associated with different ethnic
foods (curry powder or chili powder, as simple examples, or Chinese five spice mix). Unsalted marinades like vinegar and
(a little) oil with onions or garlic and spices can also enliven a dish that seems bland when salt is removed.
Like any change, reducing salt can be a challenge and requires conscious thought, but many options are available to make
it both tolerable and pleasant, and the newly freed palate might discover a whole new world of real flavor.
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