Get the Salt Out

by Ann Louise Gittleman, Ph. D. , C. N. S.

  TASTEFUL TECHNIQUES

  28 Learn to enjoy the taste of foods as they are, without any added salt. If you lessen salt in your diet gradually, you’ll be amazed to find that foods you ate regularly a month or two ago suddenly seem much too salty. Even more encouraging, you’ll find that natural foods that seemed bland before are really delicious. Studies conducted at the Monell Chemical Senses Center confirm that people’s desire for salt falls off as they use less of it.

  29 Explore the five tastes. This is a tip that not only will make eating more pleasurable, but may actually improve your health as well. According to the ancient Five Element Theory of food therapy in Chinese medicine, too much of one taste can cause imbalance in the body. Most Americans overindulge the sweet and salty tastes and don’t appreciate the other equally important tastes: sour (as in a lemon); bitter (as in mustard greens); and pungent (as in a radish). Emphasize these other tastes to establish better balance in your diet and your health.

  30 “Fool” your taste buds into thinking salt is present by overstimulating one of the other tastes. Jeanne Jones, a spa menu consultant and author of many low-salt cookbooks, passed this tip on to me., and it’s true. This concept explains why many people can kick the salt habit when they use sour vinegar or lemon juice liberally.

  31 Remember to stimulate your sense of smell because it is closely connected to your sense of taste. In fact, besides your basic tastes, all of your other “tastes” are really smells. To demonstrate this fact, Jeanne Jones recommends that you try this test: hold your nose the next time you eat one of your favorite foods. You’ll probably be surprised how little you actually taste.

  32 Satisfy occasional yens for salt with small amounts of foods that have salt on the surface (for example, salted nuts). The tongue’s sensors can distinguish the taste of salt on the surface of foods much more quickly, easily, and potently than they can pick up the taste of salt when it is mixed or cooked into foods. (This is another reason to sprinkle a small amount on your food at the table instead of mixing salt in while you cook.)

  33 Do not try to determine the sodium content of foods by relying on your taste buds. The taste buds were designed to pick up the salty taste, yet most forms of sodium (like the sodium additives in many processed foods) do not taste salty. In addition, taste buds can become confused by the combination of salt and sugar in processed foods. The salty taste and the sweet taste offset each other, which gives us an inaccurate impression that these foods contain less salt and sugar than they really do.

  34 Taste food before you salt it (if you decide to salt it). This is an obvious tip too many of us forget. All too often, we grab for the salt shaker without thinking about it, even before we take one bite. Replace this unhealthy habit with a “taste and decide” approach: if a food needs natural salt, by all means add a shake or two, but go easy. You always can add more later if you need to, but it’s impossible to remove salt once you’ve added it.

  HERB MAGIC

  35 Use herbs and spices imaginatively. Most of us haven’t begun to explore the taste possibilities available to us through the creative use of these small gifts from nature. Herbs and spices may be small, but you’ll find they can produce wonderfully big flavors. When you tantalize your taste buds with everything from hot cayenne to pungent mustard, your taste buds will be happy to experience these new flavors in place of salt.

  36 Besides their taste, there’s another reason to use herbs and spices in cooking: many of them are rich in nutrients that are beneficial to our health. The herb tarragon, for example, is an excellent source of potassium, a mineral that works in a seesaw balance with sodium and can counteract some of sodium’s negative effects. Ounce for ounce, tiny tarragon packs a powerful nutritional punch: according to Judith Benn Hurley, author of The Good Herb (William Morrow and Company, 1995), one tablespoon of tarragon supplies 145 milligrams of potassium. By comparison, three ounces of potassium-rich chicken contain 195 milligrams.

  37 For the best effect, use herbs and spices that are at their peak of flavor and aroma. Dried herbs and spices have a shelf life of only about six months; after that, many of them develop lifeless or unappetizing tastes. To keep their flavor as vibrant as possible you should store herbs and spices in small, airtight jars in a cool, dry, dark place away from the kitchen stove. When you open, a jar of dried herbs, they should send out a fresh, strong, distinctive aroma. If they don’t—if they taste more like hay than the herb they are supposed to be—you aren’t utilizing the full flavoring potential of herbs. Better to discard the old batch and find some fresher herbs that will make your salt-free meals come alive.

  38 If you don’t use dried herbs soon after purchase, either buy them in smaller amounts or transfer some of them to a plastic bag and store them in the freezer.

  39 Keep zesty ground herbs like garlic powder, onion powder, or cayenne pepper in shakers on the table. They make tasty, healthful condiments you can use in place of salt. (Be sure to buy garlic and onion powder, not garlic and onion salt.) One Salt Shaker.

  40 Try the refreshing flavor of fresh herbs on both raw and cooked foods. Once you try them, you might just prefer the taste of fresh herbs, as I do. (To use fresh herbs in place of dried herbs in a recipe, substitute two to four times the amount of fresh herbs as the indicated amount of dried herbs.) Easy-to-find fresh herbs include basil, oregano, dill, mint, rosemary, thyme, and tarragon.

  BONUS TIP: If you really enjoy the flavor of fresh herbs, you might want to consider growing your own in a garden or in pots on your windowsill. It’s quite a thrill to watch the herbs grow and to have ready-to-snip herbs at your fingertips.

  41 Fresh herbs can be frozen. Whether you grow herbs yourself or find them in the produce section of your supermarket, never let fresh herbs wilt away and go bad in the refrigerator. Put the leaves, whole or chopped, in small bags and freeze them for future use. When you use them, you can add them frozen to cooked dishes; there is no need to defrost them.

  42 Use the flavoring magic of herbs to make savory Herb Butter. It’s a delicious condiment that can add a gourmet touch to an everyday meal, and it has hundreds of possible uses. Try brushing fish with dill butter, topping baked potatoes with basil butter, or adding tarragon butter to steamed asparagus spears. To make Herb Butter, follow this simple recipe, which I use. One Salt Shaker.

  HERB BUTTER

  ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

  ½ cup finely chopped fresh herbs or 2 teaspoons to ¼ cup crushed dried herbs

  Combine both ingredients in a small bowl and mix together with a spoon until smooth and creamy. Cover tightly and chill for a few hours for the best flavor. Makes ½cup.

  43 For fancier Herb Butter combinations, you also can add a few teaspoons or tablespoons of salt-free tomato paste, lemon juice, wine, or vinegar to the basic recipe. One Salt Shaker.

  44 Transform a quality olive oil into an extraordinary herbed oil through the art of infusion. Fill a one-cup glass jar with three tablespoons of fresh herbs (pounded to bruise them slightly), then add ½ cup warmed olive oil. Allow the oil to cool, then seal the jar, and refrigerate for a few weeks before using. Fat carries the herbal flavor throughout a dish, even when you use only small amounts, so an herbed oil makes an excellent salt-free seasoning to dribble on steamed vegetables, salads, or whole-grain pasta. One Salt Shaker.

  45 Another flavorful addition to low-salt cooking that you can make yourself is herbed vinegar. To make it, loosely fill a clean glass bottle or jar with one cup of fresh herbs of your choice. Add one quart of cider vinegar, white wine vinegar, or red wine vinegar, cap the bottle, and label it. Let it stand in a cool, dark place and after a few days, add more vinegar if needed. Cap it again, then allow the herbs to do their wonders for three to four weeks. Like an herbed oil, an herbed vinegar perks up all salt-free fare, but it’s particularly good in marinades and salad dressings. One Salt Shaker.

  46 If convenience is more important to you than price, you can purcha
se ready-to-use herbed vinegars and herbed oils in supermarkets. One brand of both of them that I like is Spectrum Naturals, which you can find in natural food stores nationwide. This company makes a nice assortment of flavored vinegars ranging from Italian herb wine vinegar to garlic wine vinegar to peach vinegar. All of its vinegars are made with organic grapes and contain no added sulfites, a common allergen found in commercial vinegars. Spectrum’s herbed oils (called World Cuisine Oils) also are a boon for anyone trying to reduce sodium without reducing flavor. They come in five varieties that range from aromatic garlic-herb Mediterranean Oil to an Asian Oil that is a combination of fragrant sesame oil and fiery ginger and hot pepper. Just a few drops of either an herbed oil or an herbed vinegar gives surprising punch to otherwise bland food. One Salt Shaker.

  THE PROBLEMS WITH MSG

  47 When you’re looking for flavor without the salt, you might be tempted to want to use a flavor enhancer such as monosodium glutamate (MSG). MSG can fool our taste buds into thinking foods have greater flavor than they actually do, but at an unsuspected but increasingly serious price to our health, as this section will explain.

  48 MSG excites not only the taste buds, it also excites nerve cells, eventually damaging and killing them. Recent scientific evidence suggests that the long-term ingestion of so-called excitotoxins like MSG contributes to the development of diseases of both the brain and nervous system. As Russell L. Blaylock, M.D., says in his book Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills (Health Press, 1994), “The distribution of cellular damage caused by large concentrations of MSG is very similar to that seen in human cases of Alzheimer’s disease.”

  49 A large and growing segment of the population—more than 25 percent, according to MSG researcher George R. Schwartz, M.D.—reacts to the amounts of MSG that are commonly added to most processed foods today. Reactions range from mild to severe and include everything from headaches to asthma and nausea to depression. Among the most disturbing symptoms MSG can cause are chest tightness and pain, heart palpitations, and other heart irregularities. Because of serious effects like these, all of us, but especially those who have heart disease, should avoid this common but hazardous food additive.

  50 Like salt, MSG has the ability to mask inferior food quality and disguise food spoilage. This makes MSG a nightmare for health-conscious food consumers. Restaurants and food manufacturers can use the substance to disguise unappetizing, nutrient-poor processed foods that our sense of taste would normally tell us to avoid.

  51 Naturally occurring MSG isn’t the problem that synthetic MSG is. A compound of sodium and the amino acid glutamic acid, MSG is actually found in many natural foods such as mushrooms, tomatoes, peas, and cheese. Naturally occurring MSG does not appear to cause health problems in small amounts, but isolated synthetic MSG, which is commonly added in large amounts to processed foods, clearly does.

  52 Don’t forget that synthetic MSG is a source of unhealthy sodium, and its consumption has doubled every decade since the late 1940s. Although common table salt is the number-one source of unhealthy sodium in our diet, MSG is an increasingly common—and perhaps more harmful—source. To steer clear of harmful synthetic MSG, eat as many natural foods as possible. For more tips, see the Supermarket Savvy section in this chapter and Getting What You Want and Menu Savvy in chapter 9.

  HEALTHIER SALTS AND S ALTERNATIVES

  53 Commercial sea salt is better to use than common table salt because it doesn’t contain the aluminum, and sugar that table salt normally contains. It does, however, have many drawbacks. Like table salt, commercial sea salt is heated at high temperatures and refined to remove all naturally occurring minerals besides sodium and chloride. It also is treated with anti-caking agents, but the anticaking agents used are generally less toxic than those used in table salt. When buying prepared foods, choose those that contain sea salt over those that contain salt or, better yet, buy unsalted products and season them yourself with the healthier salts listed below.

  54 Unrefined sea salt is a naturally occurring salt made from evaporated seawater. To distinguish unrefined sea salt from commercial sea salt, look for a brand that is not oven dried, that contains no chemical additives, that contains naturally occurring iodine, and that has trace amounts of other minerals in addition to sodium and chloride. Unrefined sea salt also is usually slightly gray in color, and many people think it tastes saltier than table salt.

  BONUS TIP: Because seawater around the world has become increasingly polluted, many health-conscious consumers have voiced concern over whether toxic chemicals may be in unrefined sea salt. I think this is a legitimate concern. For this reason, be sure to use a brand that can verify its purity.

  55 Unrefined rock salt, sold under the brand name Real Salt, is a pollutant-free salt extracted from an ancient seabed in Utah. It is not altered with any coloring, additives, or bleaching, and it is not kiln dried. It also has a full complement of trace minerals, including iodine. For all of these reasons, Real Salt is the brand of salt I recommend most often. Look for Real Salt in natural food stores throughout the country, or see the Resources section for ordering information.

  56 Put the salt you now use to a test to determine its metabolic acceptability: add a spoonful to a glass of plain water, stir it several times, and let it stand overnight. If the salt collects in a thick layer on the bottom of the glass, your salt has failed the test: it is heavily processed and not very usable by the body. To give your body salt it can use, switch instead to an unrefined natural salt that will dissolve in a glass of water as well as in bodily fluids. This experiment gives you a visual example of what refined salt can do to your system: collect in body organs and clog up the circulatory system.

  57 Remember that unrefined sea or rock salt still contains 2,000 milligrams of sodium per teaspoon—the same as common table salt. Even when the salt you use is unrefined, it should not be used with abandon. Whereas small amounts of natural salt can contribute noticeably to improved digestion, circulation, and better general well-being, too much of any salt can cause an overload of sodium in the body, increasing the likelihood of conditions like hypertension and osteoporosis. Keep this concept in mind when you begin using a healthier salt in place of table salt. Feel free to use unrefined salt; just do so in moderation.

  58 Sesame salt, also known as gomasio, is a combination of sea salt and ground sesame seeds that is often used in macrobiotic and Oriental cooking. Since sesame seeds are good sources of important minerals like calcium, magnesium, and potassium, sesame salt is richer in minerals than unrefined sea salt by itself. It also is lower in sodium. Try some in place of salt in dishes such as bean-and-rice combinations and Chinese stir-fries.

  59 Herbal salts are combinations of salt or sea salt and an array of tasty herbs and dehydrated vegetables. They give you a salty taste with more flavor than salt alone, and they also contain potassium and other balancing minerals that table salt simply does not have. Herbal salts are great substitutes for salt in moderate amounts, but be careful to avoid brands that contain hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP), autolyzed yeast, and other forms of synthetic MSG (See tip 90 for a complete list of MSG’s other names.) Two good, MSG-free herbal salts are Bioforce Herbamare and Trocomare, which can be found in health food stores. Although they contain a little more sodium than salt, they are made by curing unrefined sea salt with savory herbs and dehydrated vegetables. This process produces such a naturally flavorful herbal salt that most people who use Herbamare or Trocomare use less of it than they would salt.

  60 Kelp, a seaweed, is an excellent source of iodine and sodium as well as a powerhouse of other essential minerals like potassium. This food contains potassium and sodium in a ratio of 3:1—a ratio that resembles the ratio contained in body fluids (5:1) much more closely than that of salt (1:10,000). For this reason, kelp powder and kelp flakes are used by many health enthusiasts as a salt substitute. Kelp may taste slightly fishy to some individuals, however, and it also is quite concentrated, so always use half the amount
of kelp as you would salt.

  61 Kombu, dulse, and other seaweeds also are rich in hard-to-find minerals of all sorts like calcium, iron, iodine, and natural sodium. You usually can find these foods in health food stores in dried sheets or strips that can be added during the cooking of foods to improve digestion and impart a naturally salty taste. Macrobiotics, a diet program that is helpful to many cancer patients, is well known for using mineral-rich foods such as grains, beans, and vegetables to provide extra flavor to normally bland soups and stocks.

  62 Both soy sauce and tamari sauce are salted and fermented soy products that develop deep, rich flavors during the process of fermentation. Either one can be added to give a rich taste to Chinese stir-fries and to other foods such as Worcestershire sauce, but tamari often is the better choice because it has fewer preservatives and is less allergenic. According to In Bad Taste: The MSG Syndrome (Signet Books, 1990) by George R. Schwartz, M.D., tamari is lower in both salt and MSG than soy sauce, but it is not entirely MSG-free. If you use either one of these sauces, remember that they are concentrated sources of sodium—one tablespoon of either contains about 1,000 milligrams—so use them sparingly.

  63 Reduced-sodium tamari or lite soy sauce is a better choice of seasoning when you’re getting the salt out of your diet. Both are less concentrated than regular soy sauce: depending on the brand, they can contain anywhere from 50 to 75 percent of the standard levels of sodium. The lowest-sodium brand that I know of is Westbrae Natural 50%-Less-Sodium Soy Sauce, which contains 430 milligrams of sodium per tablespoon. Look for this product in natural food stores throughout the country. Always be sure to buy a soy sauce or tamari sauce that contains no preservatives.