# Neutralizing salt and sugar **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 19, 2003, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042 "2003-06-19T23:47:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Susma\_Rio\_Sep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/35a633/32.png) [@Susma\_Rio\_Sep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susma_Rio_Sep)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2003, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042/1 "2003-06-19T23:47:44Z")
What chemical substances or chemical procedures or kitchen tricks can be employed to neutralize sugar or salt? Here are the situations: 1. Cooked or prepared dish or drink happen to contain too much sugar or salt; 2. You happen to have eaten too much and too highly sugared or salted foods. To neutralize here means to render the chemicals that are sugar or salt into compounds, not possessed of the food and chemical properties of sugar or salt, but at the same time at least tasteless, and very important also harmless. Thanks for any helpful information or suggestion. I know some friends who are diabetic and/or plagued by hypertension, and therefore must not ingest sugar and salt like others who are freed of these liabilities. Susma Rio Sep ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2003, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042/2 "2003-06-19T23:55:56Z")
You might be able to cover up the taste of sugar or salt, but as far as rendering them safe for diabetics or hypertensives, you are out of luck. There is no way to take the salt out of Top Ramen or the sugar out of a Twinkie, at least not so they would still be recognizable as food. ---
**Author:** ![j.c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/73ab20/32.png) [@j.c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j.c)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042/3 "2003-06-20T00:51:47Z")
If you happen to have eaten too much… that’s all she wrote. If you are cooking something, and it seems too salty, sugar and fat might overwhelm that. Too sweet can sometimes be cut a little with a splash of vinegar. Or, you can give the whole mess to the dog and start over. ---
**Author:** ![Nanoda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Nanoda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nanoda)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042/4 "2003-06-20T01:13:51Z")
You could always make the recipe bigger. ---
**Author:** ![lorinada](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b5e925/32.png) [@lorinada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lorinada)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042/5 "2003-06-20T01:25:19Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Susma Rio Sep \* > \*\* diabetic \ must not ingest sugar > > Susma Rio Sep \*\* How and where did this myth EVER get started? In over two decades of being a type 1 diabetic I have never been told I _must not ingest sugar_. On the contrary, fruit is highly recommended to even out the rate in which my blood sugar rises after a meal. And in fact, with me, rice and potatoes make my blood sugar spike higher than any candy bar ever has. We must have _carbohydrates_ of **both types** in moderation. Hey, just like we must moderate our proteins and fats, too! Hey, just like everyone without this “liability” should also do! Oh, sorry for the hijack. This is just one of my pet peeves. ---
**Author:** ![Tikki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5daacb/32.png) [@Tikki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tikki)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042/6 "2003-06-20T02:25:46Z")
This is not neutralizing the salt but I’ve heard that putting a sliced potato on oversalted soup will absorb the extra salt, then when you’re ready to eat, you just throw the potato out. ---
**Author:** ![antechinus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/fbc32d/32.png) [@antechinus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antechinus)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042/7 "2003-06-20T03:41:45Z")
You could try dialysis. Just put the whole lot in a semipermeable bag and soak in agitated water for a few days. While you are at it, you might want to irradiate the lot first, to prevent growths. ---
**Author:** ![chaoticbear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f07891/32.png) [@chaoticbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chaoticbear)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042/8 "2003-06-20T06:37:44Z")
For the salt: I’ve heard the potato thing too… If you want to make your food inedible, try adding silver nitrate… that should precipitate out the sodium. For the sugar: I don’t know if it would work, and I probably wouldn’t eat it later, but I know sulfuric acid works for pure sugar. Maybe if it’s in a food, it will work too. ---
**Author:** ![nebco9](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/cc9497/32.png) [@nebco9](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nebco9)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042/9 "2003-06-20T06:55:28Z")
I’ll ring in at #3 for putting sliced potato in salty liquid to absorb the salt, and then throw the potato out. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042/10 "2003-06-20T15:20:00Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by chaoticdonkey \* > **For the salt: … If you want to make your food inedible, try adding silver nitrate… that should precipitate out the sodium.** That would be a neat trick, considering that sodium nitrate (presumably the precipitate you’re trying to produce ) is extremely soluble in water (even more so than sodium chloride). Indeed, I’m not aware of _any_ sodium or nitrate salts that are insoluble in water. Cites: [http://www.thesciencedesk.com/SolubilityGraph.html](http://www.thesciencedesk.com/SolubilityGraph.html) [http://onsager.bd.psu.edu/~jircitano/soluble.html](http://onsager.bd.psu.edu/~jircitano/soluble.html) ---
**Author:** ![Terminus\_Est](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terminus_est/32/3087_2.png) [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042/11 "2003-06-20T15:35:28Z")
Adding silver nitrate should precipitate out silver chloride. You’ll still be left with a mess of sodium and nitrate ions. ---
**Author:** ![curly\_chick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7ba0ec/32.png) [@curly\_chick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curly_chick)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042/12 "2003-06-20T15:53:42Z")
I can’t see what use it would be to precipitate the silver chloride out unless the OP has a centrifuge and the food is a liquid. All you would have done would be turn the food from too salty to poisonous. The potato trick works for salty foods, you can do it with bread, as well. Sugary foods can be diluted, by making the recipe bigger, as has already been said on here, but by very little else in an ordinary kitchen. The reason there is no real chemistry quick fix for these is that sugar and salt are both neutral compounds to start with. Of course chemists make sugars and salts into other things in the lab, but temperature, pressure, catalysts and the associated specialist equipment are usually needed. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2003, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042/13 "2003-06-21T15:14:10Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Terminus Est \* > \*\*Adding silver nitrate should precipitate out silver chloride. You’ll still be left with a mess of sodium and nitrate ions. \*\* …which will certainly not “precipitate out the sodium.” ---
**Author:** ![susidknghrtsrzon\_a](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e68b1a/32.png) [@susidknghrtsrzon\_a](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susidknghrtsrzon_a)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2016, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042/14 "2016-10-21T03:13:45Z")
Just stumbled across this and wanted to register, so then too much nitrates could be upsetting. The potato thing is a form of crystalization from a supersaturated solution. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2016, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042/15 "2016-10-21T03:22:24Z")
> [@Tikki](#): > > This is not neutralizing the salt but I’ve heard that putting a sliced potato on oversalted soup will absorb the extra salt, then when you’re ready to eat, you just throw the potato out. This is a myth. No idea why it is widely believed. A potato will absorb some salty water but that is different than absorbing salt. It will not reduce the concentration of salt in the soup. Food scientist and university chemistry professor Robert Wolke documented an experiment to demonstrate this in his book “What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained.” ---
**Author:** ![penultima\_thule](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penultima_thule/32/3833_2.png) [@penultima\_thule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/penultima_thule)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2016, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042/16 "2016-10-21T05:08:28Z")
> [@Susma\_Rio\_Sep](#): > > 1. Cooked or prepared dish \*\*or drink \*\*happen to contain too much sugar or salt; If you have a drink that is too salty or too sugared then (in theory) you could use osmosis e.g. put the drink into a container with a semi-permeable membrane say a latex balloon and suspend in a bowl of distilled water. How long this would take I couldn’t say but probably at least overnight and the drinkability of the filtered remains might be adversely affected. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2016, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042/17 "2016-10-21T05:31:18Z")
> [@penultima\_thule](#): > > If you have a drink that is too salty or too sugared then (in theory) you could use osmosis e.g. put the drink into a container with a semi-permeable membrane say a latex balloon and suspend in a bowl of distilled water. > > How long this would take I couldn’t say but probably at least overnight and the drinkability of the filtered remains might be adversely affected. That would just dilute the drink by drawing additional water through the membrane. The same result could be achieved by diluting the drink in a glass, by adding water. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2016, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042/18 "2016-10-21T05:36:37Z")
> [@susidknghrtsrzon\_a](#): > > The potato thing is a form of crystalization from a supersaturated solution. 😉 It’s not possible to have a supersaturated solution of salt in a pot of stew or soup. Supersaturation typically occurs in fairly pure solutions - if your stew was supersaturated, the stuff in there already (chunks of carrot, chicken, barley, whatever) would already be causing nucleation. The potato thing is a myth - it might make the soup palatable by offsetting the flavour of the salt with starch etc, but it’s not going to remove very much salt - the best that could be hoped for would be that the potato becomes as salty (in terms of concentration) as the broth, allowing you to remove that amount of salt from the recipe. The same effect could be achieved by removing a ladle full of the broth and replacing it with unsalted broth. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2016, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042/19 "2016-10-21T06:02:46Z")
An ion-exchange resin could be used to replace the sodium with calcium. Whether the rest of the contents of the broth would actually be compatible with this is another question. But you can remove sodium, which from a dietary point of view is the bad ion. In fact it seems that ion-exchange beds are used in the food industry for all sorts of interesting processing, and can even be used to move sugar about. I don’t think either salt or sugar removal via ion-exchange is going to be viable for prepared food, but the principle is interesting. One point about the OP. “neutralise” is a funny word. People know about neutralising acids or bases. So the idea often gets used for things where there is no actual equivalent reaction. There is no anti-salt that neutralises salts. Nor an anti-sugar. This is, in part, because there is no equivalent to neutral salt or neutral sugar concentrations. Acid versus base is because there is a concentration of protons in water that has some neutral properties, and anything more or less than that has active chemical action (ie is acidic or caustic.) The only concentration of salt that is neutral is zero, and the same for sugar. (OK this is very slightly not true, ultra pure water has some very interesting properties, but that is beyond these thoughts.) Sugar might be converted to something else. Letting your food ferment would achieve this. Somehow I doubt this was the intent. ---
**Author:** ![Carl\_Pham](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9a140/32.png) [@Carl\_Pham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carl_Pham)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2016, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042/20 "2016-10-21T07:05:37Z")
First, let’s be clear that your food doesn’t generally contain “salt” (sodium chloride, NaCl) but dissolved sodium (Na+) and chloride (Cl-) ions, because sodium chloride immediately comes apart in water. As mentioned above, it’s the Na+ that tastes “salty” and does all the unfortunate things to your blood pressure. Second, the “sugar” that probably most concerns you is called sucrose, and it’s a molecule made of two simpler sugars (called glucose and fructose) chemically bonded together. That’s the “sugar” you add when you cook, although there are an enormous number of other compounds that a chemist also calls “sugars,” a few of which actually taste sweet, but most of which don’t. So you’re asking: is it possible to do a chemical reaction with the Na+ and sucrose in my food that will turn them into something else, something harmless? Sure. Chemists have spent centuries figuring out how to do these things. The most difficult one is going to be the Na+, because sodium is a very, very reactive element, and it really, really likes to form the Na+ ion in the presence of water. It would take some very powerful and complex chemistry to prevent that. In fact, the only thing that comes to mind is some kind of fancy chelating agent that would surround the Na+ with a “cage” made up of some organic (= food-like) molecule that was indigestible, so that the sodium in its carrier cage would be carried entirely through your digestive system without being absorbed. The sugar is relatively easy, because sugars are already pretty chemically reactive. There are many, many reactions that could be done on the sucrose to turn it into something that is harmless but isn’t sweet and doesn’t have the effect on you that sugar does. So far so good. But now comes the big problem, and it’s almost certainly insurmountable: these are not easy reactions by any stretch of the imagination. They can generally only be done satisfactorily under laboratory conditions, with pristine starting material and very carefully controlled conditions. They are very unlikely to work well on your stove top, with all the other glop in the food (which will likely react with the stuff you put in to deal with the Na+ and sugar, producing what a chemist calls “byproducts”). Even worse, the reagents (= other chemical) that are used are going to be very expensive by your food standards. $100/kg or even $100/g are not at all uncommon in chemical reagents. Finally, in order to be 100% sure that the result is 100% safe to eat, you are going to require some very, very careful chemical analysis of the result, to be sure no nasty poison byproduct was accidentally created (particularly with all that glop in there). In short, while I’m sure what you want can theoretically be done, it would probably involve a month or so of careful lab work and at least several thousand dollars, and quite possibly much more. There’s a lot of very interesting chemistry that goes on in the food industry. If the whole field interests you, you can look into it and you might find it fascinating. Quite a lot of people who get degrees in chemistry, even advanced degrees, end up going into the food industry to work on problems of food preparation, preservation, and analysis. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutralizing-salt-and-sugar/183042.md?page=2)