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In defence of salt

David Penberthy

by David Penberthy

15 Sep 01:38pm

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Filed under: Cooking, Food, Health, Nhmrc, Nutrition, Preventative Health

40 comments

The National Health and Medical Research Council might know a fair bit about health, but they don’t know anything about cooking.

Mmmmmmmm, salty.

The NHMRC last week released the innocuous sounding Assessing Cost-Effectiveness in Prevention report. The document is the result of five years of research by people who take carrots, nuts and celery into work in plastic lunch boxes, and think the rest of us should do the same.

The report has at its centre some fairly predictable calls for smokers to be taxed out of existence with an immediate 5 per cent increase in tobacco taxes (on top of the 25 per cent increase in April this year), a 10 per cent increase in the tax on spirits, and an increase in the legal drinking age from 18 to 21.

Smokers and drinkers are now so inured to this kind of stuff that they laugh wheezily in the face of both death, and more punitive tax regimes.

The left-field entry in this report is that in addition to the war on (legal) drugs we are now about to declare war on salt, that most excellent of condiments, which for centuries has played an invaluable role in preserving food but accentuating and enhancing flavour.

In her little-known tome Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen, the doyen of food writers Elizabeth David devotes five pages to the correct use of salt.

“Forget not the salt, whether it be a question of your bread dough, your salad dressing, your béchamel sauce, your omelette, your rice, your spice compounds – and do not forget the salt when it comes to making a stock or broth which is to be concentrated by reduction, or you take the risk of making it uneatable by anybody’s standard.”

Such wild talk would have Ms David arrested by the NHMRC, which in its report is proposing a mandatory limit on salt in the three basic food items of bread, cereals and margarine, and a new 10 per cent tax on so-called junk foods such as potato crisps.

The idea of not using salt, or using an imperceptible amount of salt, in the making of bread is a genuine culinary crime. And while any decent cook will only use unsalted butter in cooking – purely so as to control the amount of salt which is added subsequently to a dish - you would never put unsalted butter on your bread as it does nothing to bring out bread’s flavour.

The issue here seems to be one of volume. Are we really ingesting so much salt as to be endangering our lives? If we are, surely it’s a question of educating people who subsist on nothing but Cheezels and Kettle Chips that there’s other, wiser ways of using the stuff?

As anyone who has ever accidentally bought a bottle of tasteless salt-free tomato sauce will tell you, the mandated absence of salt is a recipe for culinary disaster. Letting health experts determine what should really be questions of food preparation is the most unwelcome culinary trend since the invention of wholemeal pasta.

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40 comments

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    • Tim says:

      02:01pm | 15/09/10

      I agree.
      I also wish that when I went to my local Chinese restaurant, I could get extra MSG added.
      It makes everything taste awesome.
      Stupid allergic people.

      Reply

    • acotrel says:

      09:02am | 16/09/10

      Why would anyone have a phobia about having salt in their food?  In Australia we have a food standards body which is supposed to control additives:
      http://www.foodstandards.gov.au
      Yet in almost every item on supermarket shelves there are preservatives guaranteed to give an angina attack to anyone with a heart condition!

    • Super D says:

      02:10pm | 15/09/10

      Basically for anything that is remotely enjoyable there has been a report issued recommedning that people desist from doing it which is always followed by a second report that demands that governments stop people from doing it.

      Oh and you are spot on about the salt free tomato sauce.  Anyone who has ever bought it by mistake is forever vigiland in the sauce aisle.  If I ever achieve world domination I will banish salt free tomato sauce to the health food aisle where all the other products reports tell me I probably should by but don’t reside.

      Reply

    • Greg says:

      09:14pm | 15/09/10

      My elderly mother had a fall last year that put her in hospital for a few weeks. While there she began hallucinating and basically went half mad. After many tests the results came back ... a lack of salt in her diet.
      I also had siblings with cystic fibrosis, they relied on salt tablets every day as one of their medications.
      These wankers need to piss off.

    • reunig says:

      02:03pm | 16/09/10

      Salt free baked beans are a joke as well. Made that mistake once. Never again.

    • AdamC says:

      02:20pm | 15/09/10

      There is an increasingly worrying, soft-totalitarian trend among the wowser set of late. The media has played an important role in it, especially by not critically engaging with many of the claims of health evangelists.

      Some examples: It is often claimed that the current generation of young people may have shorter life expectatncies than their parents. What is this based on, Nostradamus? Likewise, yesterday Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle remarked that he had never known of someone getting cancer from passive smoking. According the the experts, his comments are ill-informed and wrong. But how do we really know the extent of the dangers of passove smoking? The media always reports these claims without requiring people to provide evidence.

      It seems odd to me that, in a period of many decades in which life-spans have continued to increase, we are in the midst of so many health crises requiring radical government actions.

      Reply

    • Gregg says:

      04:19pm | 16/09/10

      Playing Nostradevilus for you Adam, just as life spans for some peoples have increased substantually over many decades and fpor various reasons, medical treatments not to be ignored, can you not also envisage that a decline in life spans may also take several decades to mature.
      The basis for that thought is not so much that medical treatments will not continue to be developed though the word is that the fight against bacterial infections becomes ever more difficult for those having the misfortune to be hospitalised, but more because of the diseases that can be linked to obesity and inactivity.
      Overindulging in packaged food and takeaways is doing nothing to combat obesity and is likely something that more and more of yoinger generations have to deal with, hence the claim for generation of younger people.
      The extent of danger from passive smoking is more nebulous and obvioiusly any connection is possibly related to the extent of exposure and then you’ll always have those shrivelled old characters rolling their own or stoking a pipe at 80+ without a care in the world and no cancer in sight that could give the impression that developing cancer may be more a case of genes and what you are exposed to.
      That in itself could raise the potential danger for exposure to passive smoke for if it is the smoke plus genes that are the cause, then is it more likely that the more people exposed to passive smoke the greater the liklihood of people with the matching genes are netted.
      Something we can have another study on!

    • Macca says:

      02:25pm | 15/09/10

      Here Here Penberthy, your war with large Government is more entertaining by the day. I tip my hat to you.

      I generally eat pretty healthy during the week, but when the weekend rolls over, I, like many good Australians, exercise my right to absolutely fill myself on a pub dinner, a dozen or so Schooners, and finish the evening / celebrate the morning with a Kebab. I exercise regularly and claim almost nothing via either medicare of private health insurance other than the odd physio appointment because I fell over myself and need some help re-attaching my ankle ligaments.

      Basically, to paraphrase, my lifestyle does nothing to impact negatively on society. Rather my impulsive Saturday nights probably keep many pub-owners, brewers and small business owners’ kids in exclusive Private schools. I know the Kilo Schnitzel challenge is probably going to make me feel sorry for myself tomorrow, but I’m already a fairly adequate human being. I don’t need someone telling me what I can and cannot eat.

      Reply

    • acotrel says:

      09:31am | 16/09/10

      About once every three months I go to a very nice pub in our town, order a bowl of chips, and a pint of porter, sit down and really enjoy it!  The NHMRC should do a study on people deriving such simple peasure from what is obviously ‘health food’!  Oh, yes, and I do it mid-week on what used to be a normal working day for me.  The NHMRC would do better to study the effects of stress in the workplace! I’ve had a double by-pass, and three strokes, and I just don’t care any more!

    • Samson says:

      02:45pm | 15/09/10

      I’ve never had the misfortune of buying salt free tomato sauce but I imagine it would be terrible.  I once accidentally bought salt free peanut butter though, which was dreadful.

      Monitoring your salt intake is important if you have a pre-existing heart condition, but for everyone else I can’t see anything to fuss over.  This report is just an unsurprising addition to the escalating public harassment from well intentioned but authoritarian medical qangos, which seem to be multiplying rapidly.  And no doubt it will be picked up by an uninspired politician in need of a ‘vision’ to sell to concerned mums.

      On another note I was recently convinced to switch to from tomato sauce to ketchup and I have to say it’s pretty much superior in every way.  I would eat absolutely *anything* if it had ketchup on it, and I would enjoy it too.

      Reply

    • JLT says:

      03:06pm | 15/09/10

      “I love you as fresh meat loves salt.”  For this remark, Cordelia was banished and disinherited. Ah but Lear was mad, was he not?

      Reply

    • pheelion says:

      07:11pm | 16/09/10

      That was the first thing I thought of when I read this.

      My Mother was always very sanctimonious about salt until she was in Central Australia in very hot weather, jumped into the deep end of a swimming pool and in her words “it felt like every muscle in my body cramped up”.

    • iansand says:

      03:11pm | 15/09/10

      I don’t think the problem is adding salt.  It is the amount of salt added for you.  If you add it yourself you control how much is added. 

      I stopped adding salt to anything but the water I use for pasta or rice a while ago.  Food tastes weird for a couple of weeks, but you adjust quite quickly.

      Although, to paraphrase Anthony Bourdain in Kitchen Confidential, there are two reasons why the food you eat in a restaurant tastes so much better than what you cook at home - salt and butter.

      Reply

    • papavchango says:

      03:42pm | 15/09/10

      Speaking of salt and butter, it’s darn hard to get anything but unsalted butter these days thanks to the health nazis.

      The best butter I’ve ever tasted comes from the saltbush plains of Normandy, and you actually crunch on large chunks of salt crystal in the butter - absolutely delicious spread on your baguette!

      From the same area comes the delicious ‘mouton pré salé’ - basically the sheep graze on saltbush so the meat has salt added even before any human processing.

      So while it’s bad for you like just about eveything else remotely enjoyable, salt rocks! The nanny statists can bugger off.

    • Kate - salt is the new black - G says:

      03:06pm | 16/09/10

      Penbo - couldn’t agree more - rather one little triple bypass than a lifetime of flavour bypass. I am a big fan of salt. I mean why would you bother eating fresh tomato or eggs without it? But don’t turn your back on unsalted butter - if you have half decent bread (which is cooked with a bit of added salt), then unsalted butter is SO much more delicious. The absence of salt means you are actually tasting the true creamy butter flavour not relying on salt which ends up masking the real thing. Paris Creek’s bd butter from the hills south of Adelaide is divine.  An essential and permanent feature of any food-lover’s bread board!

      Btw Papavchango - South Australia also has its own delicious saltbush mutton. Way tastier than bland baby lamb. Vast tracts of SA, between the hilariously named Iron Knob and the Gammon Ranges, are replete with happy saltbush-munching sheep. Mmmm tasty!

    • iansand says:

      03:12pm | 15/09/10

      I don’t think the problem is adding salt.  It is the amount of salt added for you.  If you add it yourself you control how much is added. 

      I stopped adding salt to anything but the water I use for pasta or rice a while ago.  Food tastes weird for a couple of weeks, but you adjust quite quickly.

      Although, to paraphrase Anthony Bourdain in Kitchen Confidential, there are two reasons why the food you eat in a restaurant tastes so much better than what you cook at home - salt and butter.

      Reply

    • Simmo says:

      03:34pm | 15/09/10

      After reading this article I feel like I have been a-SALT-ed (cringeworthy yes but I had to add it…)

      Reply

    • D says:

      03:36pm | 15/09/10

      Penbo, I think the rot has already set in. On the weekend, the wife and I went to our favourite Yum Cha place, knowing full well that there is no better way to dose up on salt and pig fat. Much to our surprise, the flavour of the goodies, while good, seemed to be lacking something, and that something is salt. I was reassured by one of the waiters that nothing had chnaged, but I suspect something was amiss. Damn shame too, as theres nothing better than a salty basket of Siu Mai or Pot Stickers…...............

      Reply

    • Macca says:

      04:18pm | 15/09/10

      @D, a Salty Soft Shell Crab or Fried Dim Sim is divine!

    • Ripa says:

      03:52pm | 15/09/10

      Salt is a necessary part of life, our tongues evolved to detect salt. We need it. Its up to the individual to decide how much they consume. From what science has been able to prove, the only people who have a problem with excessive salt intake are those that dont drink enough water and those with genetic high blood pressure related to sodium.

      Reply

    • Nicole says:

      04:20pm | 15/09/10

      I just can’t imagine what potato bake would taste like without a truck load of salt piled on. Like crap I reckon. And for those who haven’t tasted unsalted tomato sauce, it’s vile !

      Reply

    • julia says:

      10:35am | 16/09/10

      salt-reduced stock is worse

    • ABC says:

      04:28pm | 15/09/10

      I reckon you and Rick Stein would get along great Penbo.  He’s constantly going on about the “Salt Police”. 

      As you point out, salt in cooking is a flavour enhancer.  It is no different from adding olive oil,  or any other spice.  It’s not as though people are tipping truckloads of stuff over their food.  It does genuinely make food taste better.  It’s also a self-regulating substance.  If you put too much on your food tastes like total crap. 

      My sister in law doesn’t salt her kids food much, and consequently her mashed spud tastes like highly viscous wall paper paste. What’s the result - kids don’t eat it.  My brother on the other hand, makes what is probably the best mashed spud on the planet.  It contains - shock horror!!! - salt, milk and butter, and it is delicious. I called round to their joint on the weekend and my brother was doing the cooking and had prepared in addition to battered fish, some pumpkin and spud mash.  The kids whoofed it down and I have to confess I was actually lurking over the saucepan and engaging in some bombing raids into it.  I was quite pleased when the kids announced that they were full so I could then park myself at the table with the saucepan, spoon and a beer and had a delicious little snack. (In fact, was told off by my sister in law for setting a bad table manners example by buttering some bread and swirling that round the saucepan to catch all the errant mash that could not get on the spoon!).

      Reply

    • HappyCynic says:

      09:04am | 16/09/10

      Pleh, milk is too watery for my taste in a good mash.  I substitute milk for double cream, with butter, salt, white pepper (it’s sweeter than the black stuff) and some finely chopped chives and you’ll think you’ve died and gone to hell smile 

      Another issue I have is the butter nazis.  True fact, while butter may be high in saturated fats, it is actually much lower in trans fats than margarine is.  Trans fats can cause blindness, I’d much prefer a heart attack to losing my sight though in moderation it shouldn’t be an issue (some people think because margarine is better than butter they can use more as well shich is moronic) and margarine does not taste like butter either.

      Another problem I have with these ‘health freaks’ is non-iodized salt.  Tiny amounts of iodine are required for intelligence and memory.  If you remove iodine from a persons diet (especially pregnant women) you’re far more likely to get developmental problems with kids and more likely to have dumb kids too and without iodine you dramatically increase the likelihood of deformities in babies.

      Oh and if you’ve ever been camping on a fishing holiday, nothing is better than a freshly caught fish baked in salt (cooked slowly under the embers of a campfire)  *drools*

    • James Mc says:

      04:59pm | 15/09/10

      Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky is a fascinting book for salty lovers.
      All the things that come form Salt - the words Salad, Soldier, Salzburg, Ipswich (well maybe not that cool)

      Salt and fat are the ideal partners - thats why chips are king

      Go Salt.

      Reply

    • Mayday says:

      05:30pm | 15/09/10

      David you summed up this silly report in one sentence -
      “surely it’s a question of educating people who subsist on nothing but Cheezels and Kettle Chips that there’s other, wiser ways of using the stuff?”

      Everything in moderation, if you home cook better stock up on salt now before they tax the life out it!

      Reply

    • Brock Lee says:

      05:59pm | 15/09/10

      The salted dried cod is supposedly the sole reason the northern europeans were able to prosper,during the cold dark winter months ,the protein,the fish oil and the iodine,maybe this where our voracious appetite for salt comes from,I find vegetable salt the best of the best,there is a slight hint of mineral salt in all fresh plucked veg,get growing now.

      Reply

    • fairsfair says:

      07:36pm | 15/09/10

      I read an article once (wish I could remember the details) that discussed the merits of increasing salt in your diet . When lifestock gets sick - you give them a salt lick. The article essentially stated that we’d all be a whole lot better off it we upped the salt content… Interesting notion.

    • Norm says:

      06:27pm | 15/09/10

      I would dearly love to see the day whgen people in this country have to pay more for their medical costs based on the level of their health.

      I’m sick of seeing people that look like over-inflated balloon animals carrying on about “I like tasty things” while cramming crap down their throats like a starving pig at a trough.

      Not only should there be added taxes to unhealthy products but health insurance and medical care should cost more for people that don’t take care of themselves.

      Reply

    • JT says:

      06:39pm | 15/09/10

      I lived for a short while in a town in Italy where the legacy of 15th century salt tax meant that butter (even for your bread) was unsalted. Solution? Add the salt straight from a shaker to have some semblance of taste with your toast. Hardly a healthier solution.

      Reply

    • Rossco says:

      07:47pm | 15/09/10

      Sick of the nanny state government and NHRMC. Stay the f out of our lives please. Increasing tax on products does NOTHING to stop their use. If you want to battle problems it’s all about education, not about taxing the hell out of people.

      Reply

    • Dave Mac says:

      09:22am | 16/09/10

      Labor stands for Nanny Government, Liberal for small Government. Thats why these things always become more numerous when we have Labor governments. They need to spend all our money somehow. Why not on stupid reports to tell us how to live our own lives.

      And leave my VB alone. I love my beer, and not once have I punched anyone in the head, sworn at Police, kicked in a window, pissed on a wall, slapped my girlfriend etc etc.

      If alcohol makes you do these things, then stop drinking d###head!!!

      Reply

    • acotrel says:

      09:37am | 16/09/10

      Labor stands for Nanny Government, Liberal for LOUSY Government. The worst Labor government is better than the best Liberal government!

      Reply

    • Paul Hanssen says:

      10:12am | 16/09/10

      There’s a point being missed here ... the concerns being expressed about salt are that people don’t often know how much is in the _processed_ food they buy.

      If your diet consists of reasonable quantities of processed foods - Take-away meals, bread (commercial breads contain a lot of salt), lean cuisines, tinned foods/soups/stocks etc - then you risk taking in amount of salt that is bad for you.

      If you prepare foods yourself from scratch, then by all means put as much salt as you feel is necessary to create a good tasting product. But lets try and reduce the salt in the processed stuff.

      If you cook with ingredients that are (part-)processed - e.g. tinned beans/vegies, packaged stocks, bread, baked beans - then you may not need to add extra salt to the meal.

      Reply

    • Susan says:

      11:16am | 16/09/10

      I agree that it is the hidden salt in the processed, pre-packaged foods that we buy that we need to be concerned about.  I have the same concerns about sugar, which in my opinion is far worse and seems to be added to everything in large quantities.

      Reply

    • Gregg says:

      04:22pm | 16/09/10

      Perhaps just like most things we expose ourselves to or are exposed to, there’s a balance to using salt that not many of us bother too much about and it would seem if we live past the sixties on to the nineties and beyond we probably did not need to be too concerned about the use.
      Some people are to one extent or another addicted to salt just like some may be to sugar, caffiene, alcohol, drugs, sex or whatever and then if you have ever scaled back on say sugar for instance and then have something with sugar in it, it can be oh yuk! and likewise if the chips have been oversalted, it’s like you have to brush it off or gag on it.
      You can use all sorts of herbs and spices to add taste to food where required to minimise the need for salt.

      Reply

    • roland says:

      04:52pm | 16/09/10

      eat yer veggies.

      Reply

    • pheelion says:

      07:15pm | 16/09/10

      What can you expect from a bunch of people who tell us that poison is a healthier option than sugar.

      Reply

    • justmeint says:

      06:57pm | 17/09/10

      The Government is pushing the ‘reduce your salt’ intake….. but wait!
      There is NO REAL EVIDENCE that an increase in salt will cause people to suffer an increased risk of heart attack….. The studies are there for all to see for themselves, so why is there a push to lower our sodium (salt) intake?

      http://just-me-in-t-health.blogspot.com/2010/09/you-want-salt-with-that.html

      Reply

    • Chookowner says:

      07:50pm | 22/09/10

      I stopped all salt when my doctors told me too when I got pregnant. Don’t eat takeaway. Got dreadful postnatal depression. After 15 years had an idea & started using salt again. Bingo!!! What a difference. It is all very well to recommend against salt to high-processed food consumers, but dangerous to home cooks. Salt is absolutely essential for life. The British could have a salt tax in India because no-one could survive without salt. In a very hot climate we can need a lot of salt.

      Reply
 
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