FRIDAY FOOD THING
I have been coming up with a few tricks while pursuing my quest for cutting back on my sodium intake, which most medical authorities agree, should be about 2,000 milligrams per day. What the heck is a milligram, anyhow? Well, 2,400 milligrams of table salt is roughly 1 TEASPOON. Not a lot of salt.
In Europe, where I spent part of my youth, salt and pepper are usually served tableside in small “pinch” bowls (which I still prefer using), rather than shakers: it is not ill-mannered to reach into a communal pinch bowl to pluck out a pinch or two of salt, or pepper, although nowadays I prefer pepper grinders to pepper pinch bowls. Since I use sea salt exclusively, and since sea salt is usually coarse, I grind it in a mortar and pestle until it is very fine — like popcorn salt. Extremely fine-ground salt, I discovered, has a lot more BANG than normal-grained salt: the powdered fineness overpowers taste buds such that — psychologically, at least — less salt is required.
Each morning I dutifully grind 1 TEASPOON* of sea salt into dust, and put it in my empty salt pinch bowl. That is my allotted “raw salt bank” for the day — a sobering, pitiful amount. In a perfect word, that’s all the salt I’m supposed to consume on any given day. When it’s gone, it’s gone. The neat thing, though, is I can peek into the bowl at any moment and know exactly how much salt is still available for that day.
Works for me.
Unfortunately, here’s the rub: if one uses prepared foods and you also use all of your salt bank: you’re just fooling yourself. So, if you prepare a box-mix of something that contains, let’s say, 1,000 milligrams of salt per serving, you must subtract 1/2 TEASPOON (that’s half of your daily allotment!) from your raw salt bank. The process, aside from being painful, works. I have found from exploring my personal prepared foods habits, that if I begin my day with 1/2 TEASPOON* of salt in my salt bank instead of a full teaspoon, the guilt goes away. But the pain level increases.
There is no free ride.
I suspect my salt bank will change with the seasons, like in the summer, when I eat more and more vegetables from my garden, and less, highly salted prepared foods.
Prepared foods’ salt contents are killers. Why do prepared-foods manufactures insist in putting so much salt into their seasoned products and mixes? Why don’t manufactures either include a separate, sealed salt envelope inside the box, or omit the salt completely, thereby giving the consumer a measure of credit for being smart enough to season their own food?
What an insult.
Hey, manufactures: ARE YOU LISTENING? Let us add our OWN salt to your over-salted mixes and canned goods — think of all the money you’ll save by not having to buy all that salt to add to your products!
One sea salt from France that I was buying for years – La Baleine (The Whale) – added iodine and has apparently gone mainstream in the grocery aisles here.
Maybe they have a “specialty” and unadulterated version in herb and spice shops that I can purchase.
When things get popularised sometimes quality and purity go out the window.
Sigh.
From Canada
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For manufacturers to package the sodium separately wouldn’t work. I’ve tried DelMonte’s ‘no salt added’ canned vegetables and they were horrible. No amount of salt that I added made them taste any better. It has to be in the processing (?)-just my opinion.
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And then there is “naturally occuring” sodium…research , for instance, how much sodium is in a fresh tomato!
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I am in agreement with the other posters that there is too much salt in packaged and canned foods.
Knorr soup mixes, while having a great range of “exotic” concoctions, have too much salt in the seasoning part. I usually separate it out and halve it and the soup is just as delicious – with custom additions, of course.
I am switching to sea salts almost exclusively and find the range of them interesting – pink, grey Britanny, black, white – and I may be deluding myself but they TASTE saltier and don’t they have some trace minerals in them?
But in defence of salting, have you ever had pasta that didn’t have a liberal dose when cooking? It just dies on the taste buds.
Since I prefer pasta plain with a very good olive oil, a bit of salted butter, and freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano or Romano cheese or both, I am satisfied. I get tired of tomato sauces from time to time. And I find whole wheat pasta to be uninspiring – healthy, but whole wheat needs to be cut with regular pasta to have any character. It must be the extra starch in the regular that adds distinction.
Now ,what was the subject – salt or pasta?
Ruthie and her wine was inspiring. If alcohol is not restricted in anyone’s diet, the varieties of them add interest and depth to most dishes.
Timothy from Canada
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Great comments, Tim. Bingo! I pretty much agree with everything you said. I have tried many different sea salts. The only one I didn’t care for was gray sea salt, Russian, from the Black Sea. To me, it tasted oily, as in OIL-FIELD oily. Very expensive. I had a pink sea salt from somewhere or another. Very tasty. If you browse “sea salt”, you will find all kinds of rantings about health values. I don’t care about that. I think sea salt just tastes better. Period. Besides, I abhor the thought of dubious think tanks determining to put iodine in our commercial salt, supposedly to improve “pourability” as well as chemical dietary enhancement. In my opinion, we have enough chemicals being absorbed into our bodies without the need for folks inventing new ones. Whenever I visit a restaurant that serves commercial salt, I can TASTE the iodine. Nasty stuff.
Unfortunately, these types of health decisions are made by the same folks who put chloride in our drinking water and who — from inside a veil of ignorance — allowed our soldiers to casually observe early-on nuclear testing from close range while wearing sunglasses for protection, and who sprayed our neighborhoods (and following throngs of gleeful children) with DDT as well as our troops with Agent Orange.
But I don’t want to get started on that. Like salt, it’s not good for my blood pressure.
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Hi Tim, In all my 78 years, Ive naturally been weak on the salt figuring each can do as they wish when eating a meal. Well, I think with your theory, I’d have to use my Pinch Bowl for the one thing I can not do with out. It would all go on my big bowl of Popcorn and Peanut Butter Pocpcorn. Which was our treat on weekends . Great when you wait all week for it during the depression. Kid stuff still sticks with me for Weekend Popcorn. mmmmmmmm. Love reading your Blogs and Groans. Thanks for some fun happiness Tim. Marlene Clark.
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Hey Tim. If they did omit the salt, we’d just pay more for the product…..think ‘fat free’ foods and how they cost more than regular foods….go figure…..the corporates have us either way. Good idea though.
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Brilliant, Tim! Omitting salt entirely, and putting a salt PACKET in their foods seems really smart to me – but I can hear them now boo-hooing how expense the packets would be. But I’m with ya!!
Cheers – and Happy Holidays!
Vicki
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Tim, your salt blog hits the spot! I,too, am tightly rationed on salt, and I spend an ungodly amount of time trying to figure out how much salt I’m getting from those damned packaged foods. Your suggestions were really helpful.
BTW, I.m a 92 year old retired professor, and find all of your posts a welcome change from the usual junk. Keep it up!
Jim
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I appreciate your note. I’ll try to remain junk free!
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I’ve found that cooking with wine (the stuff you drink, not “cooking wine” which contains a boatload of sodium) my tastebuds are fooled into thinking something is salted. That way I can omit the salt altogether and still be satiated. Start with something simple like spaghetti sauce or beef stew. Do not put any salt into your cooking, but add some red wine or port instead. You may be surprised at how good your food will taste. Besides, salt changes the taste of food; now you get to find out what the food actually tastes like!
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But salt is the cheapest ingredient–I’m sure they would add more if they could get by with it. As another who has been ordered to lay off the salt, I find food WAY TOO SALTY! Cheddar cheese especially. Not to mention various chips that I dearly love. I realize salt is a preservative–but give us a break…
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That’s interesting about the salt free foods. I buy no salt canned veggies at Meijers, and they are priced the same as the regular salted canned veggies. That’s just the Meijer brand though, but they have EVERYTHING in both versions. Mushrooms, beets, spinach, corn, green beans, collards, tomatoes, etc etc. So the other companies that charge more for unsalted are really ripping you off! If Meijers can do it, they can too.
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Yoicks back at you. Between yours and Eileen’s comments, you’ve made my day.
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Tim, I think you may be cheating yourself by measuring your coarse salt crystals BEFORE pulverizing them. You’re getting a lot of empty air space between crystals in that teaspoon of coarse crystals. Try measuring AFTER grinding and see if you’ve really got a full teaspoon. I’d hate to think you’re depriving yourself more than necessary. Yoicks!
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I think you mean you are limited in sodium. Chemically speaking, salt is made up of sodium and chloride in a roughly 40%/60% ratio. So in a milligram of salt, you have only 40% of that as actual sodium. Which makes the 1000 mg sodium in your cake mix actually 2500 mg of actual salt. I’ve made lots of cookies with 1/4 to 1/2 the amount of salt called for and find no one knows the difference. I agree with you that I think the manufacturers can reduce their salt content and no one will know the difference in taste.
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By golly, this makes sense. I never looked at it that way. So, I can have more than a teaspoon of salt per day, right? If a train leaves San Francisco traveling east at 30 miles per hour, and a train leaves New York traveling west…
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Tim, part of the reason manufacturers add salt to their products is that salt is a preservative.
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An interesting way to measure your salt. However, you have to add up the salt from every other source, which makes your teaspoon in the “raw salt bank” way over the limit.
I recently attended a cardio workshop after having an MI, and the new recommended amount of salt (in Canada) per day is 1600 mg. It can be done, and after you start decreasing salt, you soon notice over-salted food in restaurants, especially fast food places.
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A good reason to eat more unprossed foods.
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What always puzzles me is why do I have to pay MORE for a can of green beans (or anything else) if the salt is LEFT OUT of the can? Unseasoned frozen or fresh veggies are better anyway! I guess I’m just toooooo old to understand today’s marketing tricks.
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Fantastic idea, wish manufacturers would omit the salt, when cooking for two sometimes a packaged item works best but the salt content is usually so high I stay away from them. Start a “Omit Salt in Packaged Foods” campaign, I’ll join.
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Unfortunately, it has been my experience that when a manufacturer omits or reduce the salt, the cost of the product increases rather than decreases.
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One of the great mysteries of marketing: Lower the cost of production, then raise the price. It’s almost like by adding the words “low sodium” to the box, you’re increasing the shipping weight.
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