A little salt in the wound

I love to cook, one reason why I started blogging recipes on Eats@Home.

And I love to watch cooking shows on the Food network. Two of my favorites are Bobby Flay and Guy Fieri, and I occasionally like to catch Emeril and Rachel Ray.

I also love my daughter Elizabeth and respect her opinions very much.

Thus the problem when it comes to salt: Flay, Fieri and other chefs have recipes that call for salt because of its properties during cooking enhance the flavor of food; Elizabeth abhors salt, doesn't cook with it, doesn't want to see her Dad cook with it because of potential health consequences such as high blood pressure.

Well, it seems the food industry more and more is coming down on Elizabeth's side.

On the one side are the chefs who use salt to enhance the cooking process because of the way it can draw flavor out of food. So when I watch the cooking shows I see Flay and Fieri and Emeril and Ray add salt to their recipes at several steps along the way. And I'm surprised sometimes to see just how much salt they are literally tossing into their recipes.

On the other side is Elizabeth, a doctor of physical therapy who is passionate about good health, especially as it applies to food and its affect on the body. She has learned about salt and what it can to the body in terms of high blood pressure and contributing to being overweight, and how a lousy diet can lead to obesity and diabetes. She's seen the effects in her work as a physical therapist and she's loath to see it happen to her family, especially to her Dad who would rather dive head first into the joys of cooking and eating rather than worry about the perils of cooking and eating.

A recent USA Today article says that the focus in food has been on trans fats, but that the new focus is likely to be salt.

Some of the biggest food makers in the country, including Campbell and ConAgra, are introducing foods with lower and lower amounts of sodium.

According to the article, about 660 products claiming "reduced sodium" were introduced in 2007 versus 449 in 2006. Through the first nine months of this year, 402 were introduced.
"High sodium content is the single greatest problem in the American diet," Michael Jacobson, executive director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, told USA Today. "It's welcome that some companies are lowering sodium, but what's really needed is a government initiative."

According to a National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute study cited by the newspaper, about 150,000 lives could be saved annually if Americans cut sodium intake in half. The average daily sodium intake now is 4,000 milligrams — roughly twice the government's recommended amount for most people.

With policy makers and health officials going after food with too much trans fat and too many calories, it seems that salt may be next on the public policy hit list.

If you assume 2,000 calories is recommended, then consider a frozen DiGiorno For One Garlic Bread Crust Supreme Pizza has 1,450 milligrams of salt.

Elizabeth's point -- as evidenced by the DiGiorno example -- is not to add anymore salt into a diet that gets plenty of salt already from the packaged food we eat. Don't add salt to the potential wound of ill health.

But I come at it from the view that I eat not to just to fuel the body but because I also enjoy everything about food -- shopping for it, preparing it and eating it.

Eating is an emotional pleasure, not just a physical necessity. So on occasion I will enhance the pleasure with some extra salt.Certainly not as much as Bobby, Guy, Emeril and Rachel, but not as little as Elizabeth. Everything in moderation.