Salt is a wonderful mineral that mysteriously and intensely enhances the flavor, consistency and chemistry of our foods. Salt is always essential in the kitchen, but the amount of salt we should eat every day is also very important to human health.

Salt can be produced from salt mines or by exposing seawater to evaporation over salt fields. We use salt to prepare everyday foods and to replenish our minerals with minerals.

Our fondness for salt may in part stem from a biological need. Professor Russell Keast, a food scientist at Deakin University in Australia, said: “From a human health research perspective, we have studied and found that sodium concentrations are related to physiological health of the human body ''.

Sodium makes up half of every molecule of table salt, which works to keep our nervous systems and physical bodies functioning properly. At first humans found the compound to be rare, Keast said, which might explain why we like the flavor so much. Our original ancestors made sure they ate everything before they figured out how to taste it.

But the salt content in most of the diets is above the allowable level. Instead of consuming the right amount of salt, most of us eat too much salt because commercial foods produce high salt content in the ingredients that makes the dish delicious.

Because of the commercialization of food, people are currently using salt in excess of what it needs, which is harmful to health. Mr. Keast said that it is more difficult to get diners out of our high-salt diet than imagined, partly because we are by nature to prefer to eat more minerals. "It is a result of our habit that we do not have a solution yet," he said.

Control adequate salt levels in food

Salt helps improve the taste of food, besides it is also an essential ingredient for the body to function properly. In dishes, salt will help reduce bitterness and increase sweetness. This means that salt is very effective at directly affecting three of the five flavors we normally feel by mouth: sweet, bitter, salty, sour, and seasoning.

Salt can be produced from salt mines or by exposing seawater to evaporation over salt fields. (Image: ElCoqui/)

It is not clear how salt modifies the taste of foods, Keast said. Presumably, the change in taste affects the nerves, after taste senses all the compounds in each piece of food and relayed signals to our brain.

What's more impressive is that salt can alter the flavor of food from the inside, which is difficult to detect.

Participants in one study sampled a variety of broths, such as vegetarian broths. When the broth is added with salt, the eater perceives and savor the changed flavor but cannot determine where another flavor is.

Only when the amount of salt reaches a level that scientists call the "perception threshold" will people taste the so-called salinity. Mr. Keast said at that point, the attractiveness of the broth began to decline. A dish at the Goldylocks' salt level - not too much and not too little - is when the overall taste is at its best.

Food processing industry with salt

The salt content of each food is different (whether you feel it or not), there is a difference. This is why the sodium content in some products is surprisingly high. Foods made from whole grains, for example, easily incorporate high amounts of salt without spoiling taste. In the United States and the UK, bread, cereals, cookies and cakes make up about 30 to 50% of the average sodium intake a person consumes each day.

Professor Michael Nickerson, a food scientist at the University of Saskatchewan, said: `` For these foods, the high salt concentration has almost nothing to do with taste, but more to it with the consistency of the product. Products. Basically bread is made from flour, water, yeast and salt - achieving uniform increases and consistency thanks to the composition of the salt.

When the yeast produces carbon dioxide in the dough, the salt works to regulate the amount of gas each bacteria produces, ensuring that the air pockets in the final product are not too large. In order for the bread to hatch in the first place, the gluten proteins in the grain need to organize into a stretched network in response to the gas that the yeast produces has a salt component in it. Minerals cover a number of negative and positive charges per gluten protein, helping the fibers to recombine and create a stronger bond.

At the same time, the added salt helps the gluten bridges retain water and makes the dough less sticky, helping commercial bakeries out of a nightmare situation. "This means a lot for the big processing plants, since they don't have to stop all the equipment, clean it and start again the next day," says Professor Nickerson.

Home bakers usually don't need to worry about their machines getting too wet from the dough. If experiments in the kitchen with insufficient salt in the kitchen, it could involve parts collapsed when gluten intake is inadequate and yeast is acting uncontrollably, Nickerson said. In commercial bakeries, uniformity between loaves (or crackers) is key, so the amount of salt needs to be increased even more.

The salt content is overloaded

How to reduce salt salinity in food to solve problems as recommended by professors Keast and Nickerson? Because salt is either healthy or delicious, too much sodium in the diet can raise blood pressure, which in turn increases the risk of heart disease and stroke.

It is difficult to reduce the salt content of commercially produced foods. For example, customers think that soup with less salt reduces flavor and for branded biscuits, they are less likely to want to change the taste in the biscuits.

Scientific research into salt (and its substitutes) has plenty of room to develop in order to deliver nutritious food without harm to humans. "Although we know our theory and do our research, there's still a lot more to know," said Mr. Keast.

Ngoc Mai

According to Discovermagazine