I’ve written before about how food is being screwed up by the morons who have decided salt is bad for you. Most recently, I had a kebab from Shak’s (in Clifton) and the meat had no flavour whatsoever because they’d taken the bloody salt out of it.
Salt makes food taste good. You can’t get a decent Chinese takeaway anymore, because the rice is cooked without any salt and the soy sauce they use is definitely not like it used to be. Even Indian food is beginning to suffer.
It’s got to the point where I make my own.
And now – according to a story I saw today in various media – Heinz has screwed up HP Sauce by almost halving its salt content. On the one hand, they are only “following government guidelines” – but then you think “hang on! You don’t have to follow guidelines, do you?”
The thing is, research suggests that salt isn’t so bad for you after all. Even as far back as 1998, the vendetta against salt was being questioned. Mind you, I was surprised to learn that the war on salt actually began in 1969 in America. This is a nice summary of recent research.
We’ve been using salt for thousands of years. The only people who are likely to suffer ill-effects from eating it are those who overdo it, and those already predisposed to hypertension who overdo it.
Oh, and if you eat preprocessed crap (OK, not my kebabs and Indians) it’s no wonder you’re overdoing the salt intake.