Our salt intake--looks, taste and preservation

The Sunday New York Times had an interesting article on salt. Interesting because the journalist, Michael Moss, actually put the positive contributions of salt at the beginning of the article instead of burying them at the end as I've come to expect from WaPo, NYT, WSJ, LAT, CD, etc. or anything contributed by AP.

It's a fascinating article, and I encourage you to read it, but just to briefly highlight some of the positives of salt--flavor enhancer, preservative, crisper, color enhancer, plumping, texture, and masking bitterness. Without salt a lot of processed food would taste and look like "damp dog hair on cardboard." And of course, currently the processed food industry must be demonized. Without that industry, we probably wouldn't have any sick people at all!

I bought a box of Cheez-it knock offs (store brand) the other day to serve as nibbles for about half the price. The list of ingredients looked the same, but about half were broken and crumbly. Must have been something wrong in the salt ingredients. Now I know.

Pushed to Lower Salt Use, Food Industry Pushes Back - NYTimes.com