Salt	April 18, 2006

I was reading the salt container the other day and read that salt is one of the only ingredients that you can taste on the tongue without relying on the sense of smell.

Salt is one of the most basic of ingredients in the kitchen, yet also one of the most important ingredients.

Salt has been used for thousands of years. Right now I am studying Ancient Egypt, and we learned that the ancient Egyptians found something in the ground that they called natron, a combination of sodium, sodium bicarbonate, and sodium carbonate. Natron is sometimes referred to as “impure salt”. They used natron for cleaning clothes, preserving food, drying out the bodies for mummification, and much more. Natrium is the Latin name for sodium, that is why the element symbol is Na. Salt is sodium chloride or NaCl.

Everyone on my dad’s side of the family is salt-crazy. We put salt on almost everything. Whenever my family gets together, no one wants to get stuck on the wrong side of the table or they have to beware of us hogging the salt shaker.

Some people should be more concerned about a high sodium intake because they are more likely to have hypertension (high blood pressure) or have heart failure. You can reduce hypertension by eating less table salt, but studies also show that eating more potassium in fruit can help lower blood pressure. If you eat more salt and have heart failure, you can develop congestive heart failure, which makes your heart pump more blood and causes blood to back up into your lungs.

I think that a lot of food would be boring without salt, but I also think that salt is to food as makeup is to beauty, it shouldn’t completely cover up the natural beauty or flavor of the food, but it should complement it. A lot of people think that it is the makeup that makes you beautiful, but it enhances the beauty through colors and textures. I think that the salt is similar because it expands and brings out the full flavor of the food and makes it more strong and full.

Take cheese and crackers as an example. There are both sweet and salty cheeses and crackers, and when I taste cheeses with crackers, I like to taste the sweet crackers with salty cheeses because the saltiness of the cracker really contrasts with the sweet creamy flavor of the cheese, and I also like tasting the salty cheeses with sweet crackers. The salty-sweet comparison idea doesn’t only work with cheese and crackers, it works with all sorts of things like salty Parmesan cheese with sweet tomato sauce, or how people (like my cousin) eat salt on melon (which I have never tried but think sounds weird.)

Salt does many things for food, including: preserving meats and vegetables by pickling and salt curing, rising as in salt rise bread, and it chills the ice for ice cream.

An interesting salt fact:

Regular table salt is iodized (it has added iodine) because the government health officials wanted to make sure everybody gets iodine is a necessary nutritional supplement, because it keeps people from getting Iodine Deficiency Disorders, which are a leading cause of goiter and mental retardation.

I like to eat harvested, unprocessed, fleur de sel (or in English “flower of salt”) because it has a crystallized, crunchy texture that adds not only flavor but a texture almost like Pop Rocks that explodes on my tongue.

I hate to think of what life would be without salt on French fries, potato chips, eggs, popcorn, nuts, and lima beans. I think that salt would be the worst flavor to lose, because I love salt and it enhances the flavors of most foods, and life without salt would just be pretty boring!

Isis is fourteen years old and is really interested in food because her dad is a good cook. She was practically raised in a Vietnamese restaurant, and as a baby ate her first solid foods there, which were rice noodles. She tries most foods that are offered to her and her parents urge her to also. For example, when she was 7 years old, she was at a French restaurant and her parents were having snails and they easily talked her into trying them. They ended up being pretty good! Isis takes ballet, plays soccer, sings in a choir, and loves to travel. Isis went to Italy for two weeks and when she came back she went on and on about the food, especially the gelato. Isis thinks that if you are going to eat, why not eat well if you can? There seems to be no reason not to.

Email questions or comments for these two young women to webmaster@drgourmet.com.