Hard sell on salt? No, on processed foods.

The Hard Sell on Salt in today's New York Times tells in many ways how salt enhances or masks the flavor of processed food. Writer Michael Moss seems to assume that processed foods are our only option and that only corporations can stop our dangerous salt habit. Oh, when will Kellogg save us all by reducing the salt in the Cheez-It? Hooray for Campbell Soup, which has already heroicly reduced the salt in its soups, making them only very very salty instead of very very very salty!

What Moss doesn't say is that when you cook with good, fresh ingredients, salt only enhances flavor and texture. It doesn't hide or preserve, so you need much less. Ask yourself why are we eating food based on such disgusting ingredients as these:

Beyond its own taste, salt also masks bitter flavors and counters a side effect of processed food production called "warmed-over flavor," which, the scientists said, can make meat taste like "cardboard" or "damp dog hair."

Without salt [Cornflakes] tasted metallic. The Eggo waffles evoked stale straw. The butter flavor in the Keebler Light Buttery Crackers, which have no actual butter, simply disappeared.

Maybe Campbell Soup should consider reducing salt in its "Buttery Crackers" by using butter. Maybe you should consider making your own crackers. (Crackers sound hard but are fast and easy.) But if not crackers, at least make your own soup. Use ingredients that taste good to start with, not ones that require a mask of salt.

Taste for salt "intractable"? — Moss reports that:

Now, the industry is blaming consumers for resisting efforts to reduce salt in all foods, pointing to, as Kellogg put it in a letter to a federal nutrition advisory committee, “the virtually intractable nature of the appetite for salt.”

That's not been my experience, and I've got a salt tooth instead of a sweet tooth. Given the choice between potato chips and ice cream or cashews and cookies, I'll usually take the saltier choice.

But after nearly three years of eating mostly home cooking, I've lost my taste for the super-salty snacks that used to tempt me. At one long driving day through Alabama on the Cook for Good tour, I bought a single-serving size of potato chips in desperation. (Most of the other choices were variations on fried pork skin.) To my surprise, this former treat had no potato taste but an almost burning level of salt. I ate a second mouthful in disbelief, then threw the rest of the bag away. Can't eat just one? No, can't eat any.

Our appetite for salt is not intractable. Our dependence on processed foods is not complete. It's time for individuals to reclaim their kitchens as a source of health, pleasure, and independence.