How much salt do you use? How do you salt your food? Do you feel compelled to ask someone salting their food how their blood pressure is? Do you think people should avoid adding salt to their food?
Share your salt habits and stories here!
I salt almost everything I eat. Between the salt and the caffeine, it’s a wonder my heart stands the strain.
I salt everything I eat. Wouldn’t be good without it. Lots and lots of it…ahhh, salt.
Let us keep in mind the other side of the salty coin - human beings cannot live {\iwithout} salt. It is a neccessity for life, so yeah, I use it om most things. But not on ice cream, that’s just weird.
I even use it on watermelon! :D:D
With sugar, salt, and caffeine, I get my aerobic exercise for the day.
I use more salt than most folks, but I once sat at a dinner table with a woman who salted every forkful she ate.
My blood pressure has always been at the low end of the normal range until recently when it has risen to the middle of the normal range.
I don’t salt melon!
I don’t salt icecream but my favorite icecream is the saltiest butter pecan i can find and i love salted pretzel cones.
I salt most food. I sometimes salt by the bite. My blood pressure is on the low side of normal.
Has anyone else been subject to rudeness because they salt their food?
lee, as a matter of fact, yes! I had pretty much concluded that I was the only one who had experienced this. As I detailed at tiresome length in the watermelon thread, I am a relentless salter. I am not particularly obtrusive about it, and in fact make it a point not to call attention to my salt use, to the extent of carrying my own salt shaker so I don’t have to constantly ask my dining companions to pass the shaker again, please. (BTW, OldBroad, have we dined together?) But I’m amazed at how many people feel compelled to comment about it, not just once but over and over again. At one small company I worked at where everyone ate at a communal table at lunch, there was one person who rarely missed a day of making some remark about it, leaning over my plate/bowl/whatever and loudly proclaiming, “That looks like snow!” or some other similar bit of supposed wittiness {I guess}. At my current job I eat at my desk almost every day, but on the rare occasions when I’m forced to dine with co-workers, there is one person who, again, always has to comment on it, saying, as we sit down, something like “Well, better put that salt shaker right over there,” or “Should we ask them to bring a bowl of salt for you?” In fact, if he passes me in the office warming up something in the microwave, he has to say, “Have you got enough salt for that?”, etc, etc. I do find this inordinate attention to a harmless and non-offensive eating trait rather rude. I mean, it’s not as if I take food from the plates of others, or blow my nose on my napkin, or in any other way intrude on someone else’s meal. (Like I said, I even pack my own supply, the size of a film canister, which I bring out unobtrusively and use without fanfare.) If I avoided certain foods because my religion forbid them or because I was allergic, would people feel entitled to point it out and comment about it every time they saw me around food? I don’t look at their plate and say, “So, you haven’t touched your green beans, don’t you think you need the vitamins? And you’re using way too much butter on your bread.” I am too polite to make a big deal about it (“Just why the hell do you care how much salt I’m using, you nosy SOB?”), but I do wonder why no one ever seems to feel they’re being just a tiny bit rude.
When I’m in a bar and I pour a little pile of salt on a napkin so I can dip my free peanuts in it, the bartender always wants to take that napkin and throw it away, strewing a little wave of salt across the bar and forcing me to start over. I can sort of understand the first time it happens, but the same person will do the same thing again and again, until I start sitting my drink firmly on half of the napkin to stake it out.
[confession] I eat the salt off of pretzels and throw the pretzel part away (or toss it out the window to the birds).
[second confession] When I was a child, I sometimes used to sneak bits of rock salt (the kind used to melt sidewalk ice) out of the bag in the garage and take them to school to nibble on. Incredibly, I even had a friend who would share this habit with me.
I could give up sugar in my life easily, but never my salt.
I use salt a lot (although nowhere near as much as cygnus, I’ll admit). I was at the doctor last week and my blood pressure is in the low end of the normal range.
Looking at the other responses makes me wonder, could a salt craving be a person’s body trying to make up for slightly-below-normal blood pressure?
For the “relentless salters,” as cygnus put it: do you do the just-to-be-polite first taste without salting? I’ve been conditioned to do so, unless it’s something I know from experience needs salt, like bakend potatoes.
We had a friend a couple years ago who was a relentless salter. A couple guys bought him a salt lick (block) from a ranch supply store as a joke once. He claimed he actually used it.
I use very, very little salt, and in fact become slightly incensed if someone salts food I give them without even tasting it. Salt is the 1000lb gorilla of flavors. Some days I crave salt but most of the time I’d rather taste other things. My blood pressure is right in the average range.
Never encountered true rudeness, but I do often have people ask about my blood pressure when the watch me salt stuff. After all, I live in Boulder, the wellness and “centeredness” (to coin a word) capitol of the world.
I’ve had waiters in some restaurants give me the evil eye when I ask for salt (neither salt nor pepper is on the table). Apparently in these places the chef prides him/herself on exquisitely seasoned food that I will presume to insult and adulterate by adding salt!
Here’s a question: are salt and sugar cravings mutually exclusive? I rarely eat sweets and drink only diet soda.
I don’t salt my food heavily, but I do gravitate toward salty foods and snacks. I did come to the conclusion a while back that there were Sugar People and Salt People. My husband is a Sugar Person. It amazes him that he can bring home a dozen fresh donuts for breakfast and I won’t even eat one. I make myself an omelette on those days. With cheese.
I’m strange in that I never add salt to any food, except for one and one only - corn. I just can’t eat fresh, or popped corn without lots of salt.
I knew a bitch once that made noises like a loud heart beat every time i salted my food and would continue as i ate. I eventually made it clear that she could drop the teasing or be my friend and she claimed se was doing that for my own good!
I have known ppl to put salt substitute in the shaker and not tell me, again “for my own good”
I have had people hide the salt at work from me and once someone took my own shaker.
I have had cooks get mad because i salt my food so heavily. I do take a small taste before salting the food made by someone else.
I don’t add salt to most things i cook as i am cooking. It won’t taste salty enough to me until i have ruined it for everyone else. If there is someone around as i cook i get them to help determine if it needs salt.
I sometimes do crave sweets as well so they are not mutually exclusive.
Salt does not cause high blood pressure. It makes it worse for some that have high blood pressure, but it does not cause hypertension.
If you say it does, show me the study. I want numbers and hard facts.
Well, there’s this study:
http://www.newswise.com/articles/2000/5/DASHDIE2.JHM.html
I’ll have to go looking, but I believe there are other problems associated with salt, too. The one I recall is a suspected connection to osteoporosis.
I used to be a relatively heavy salter, but never before tasting. About 2 months ago I ran out of salt in the house and I kept forgetting to buy it and then I realized I hadn’t used any in around 3 weeks. So now I have it for cooking, but none in the shaker and I don’t miss it.
I like salt…use it a lot. I always put it on meat and potato products (if it’s not there already). I’m not quite cygnus, but I’d say I’m a level below him. I have a taste for salt.
I salt stuff pretty heavily when I eat out, mostly things like fries, egg & cheese breakfasts, movie popcorn, cheese pizza-- the things that as far as I’m concerned need lots o’ salt to taste their best. My boyfriend teases me about it but no one’s ever been rude to me, and I used to know someone who’d salt her popcorn as heavily as mine. No one else would share with us when we went out!
I rarely salt things at home, though. My own blood pressure has always been at the low end of normal.
About the only salt I get is from what’s on the pretzels I eat at the office. But that’s quite a bit. Mm. NaCl