Stickrod Medium

Photo by Donna The salt issue.  People keep bringing it up as though it’s news. A new report says reduce your salt by 1/2 teaspoon a day and you will be more healthy (as though that alone would do it). The fact is, we have struggled to make our food so inexpensive that we’ve basically decided to grow cardboard, which, if you’ve ever tasted it, requires plenty of salt, especially if you intend to serve it to guests. Why do you think food is so cheap?  Because there’s nothing of value in it! Including flavor. Thus, the salt. Do we really need The New England Journal of Medicine to tell us this, or to have the earnest emotive Diane Sawyer reporting it during the dinner hour as though if we just kept our hands off that salt shaker we’d be 80-year-old triathletes? The problem is in the eating of processed food, the eating of the cheap stuff.  The cup of Swanson’s Organic Chicken Broth (shouldn’t broth be in quotes?) has half a gram of our recommended 2.3 grams. There’s nearly the same amount in that healthy V-8 juice. A Big Mac has twice that. We need salt to live. It regulates nutrient exchange in our cells.  If we don’t get it we die.  Therefore our bodies are highly attuned to the taste of salt.  That’s how we’ve evolved to regulate it.  The problem is, we don’t recognize it in the form of that chicken broth (please use water instead, btw). We don’t sense it in the V-8.  We do sense it on green beans along with the butter and lemon juice, mmm.  In a baked potato, definitely.  On a tomato—salt and tomato is what salting food is all about. Have you ever tried this?  Taste a tomato plain.  Taste the same tomato with some kosher salt on it.  That shows you the value of salt. I have talked with many chefs about this.  Thomas Keller and I have had serious discussions about the stance to take on salt. I wrote a book in which the most important ingredient is salt. My belief is this: if you eat natural foods, you don’t need to worry about salt.  Period.  End of discussion.  Some people have real issues with hypertension—they have to watch it on the salt.  My mom, I go easy on it when she visits (makes her ankles puffy).  Otherwise the truth is this: if you have a salt intake problem, you’re eating the wrong food. The above tomatoes? They were salted, floured, egg-washed and dipped in differing quantities of flour and corn meal.  I love the acidity of fried tomatoes, and the juicy crunch.  Wish I were having them for lunch. Alas, it’s January.  Maybe some leftover veg stew from last night, nothing but winter vegetables, a bacon rind, and water.  Perfectly seasoned with salt.

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