The Artful Eater

Excerpt

The Goodness of Salt

It’s sad that the unclouded enjoyment of salt is a thing of the past. Salt is winning when a few grains of it are tasted in a tiny pinch, although that hardly begins to address the health campaign against this nutrient. Salt does raise blood pressure in the seventh or tenth of the population whose blood pressure is salt-sensitive. However, there is no evidence that people with normal blood pressure who avoid salt are reducing the chance of a future problem. The whole truth about salt is only beginning to be widely understood. Bureaucrats who issue alarmist guidelines see not individuals but an ill-informed mass of least common denominators, to be treated all alike. Ironically, until recently salt has been a metaphor for value, preservation, and permanence. Only during the 1980s did partial new knowledge turn the old symbol on its head. Now hardly anyone praises salt.

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