Salt: Do you love it too much? How to appease your taste buds if you have to cut back?

Back to salt! (I’ll stop soon, I promise.) We need it, crave it, love it—but we can love it too much. This is, alas, true of many good things: we can love them too much for our good.

If the doctor says you must cut back on your salt intake, what to do? You can’t really fool your taste buds—salt has a sharpness that nothing else can match—but you can stimulate them with other good tastes and delicious aromas. Look carefully at the ingredients in “salt-free seasonings” that are on the market. Among the key ingredients are dried onion and garlic, lemon and orange rind, paprika--sometimes red pepper--and parsley. To that, add basil, oregano, rosemary and thyme, depending on your tastes. You can include some or all of these seasonings in your cooking—and add more, to taste, at the end.

Salt: Why do we need it, crave it, love it?

Still more thoughts on salt. Why do we need it? Salt is in fact absolutely necessary to our survival; it is a vital biological mineral--an electroylye--that our bodies must have. Without adequate salt in our diet, we die. (Too much salt is bad for us too; I’ll come aback to that another time.)

But the fact that our bodies need salt doesn’t explain why we crave it. The fact that we should eat or drink or do something wouldn’t automatically guarantee that we would want to do so--or indeed that we would actively enjoy doing it.

Let me go back to Screwtape’s point (discussed in my last post) that God is a hedonist. God not only made things, and made so many of them beautiful, in some intrinsic sense--he also made us capable of recognizing and enjoying that beauty. God could easily have made things so that he alone saw and appreciated their beauty--but he also gave us pleasure in them.

He made us needing salt—and he made us craving and desiring salt, and then he even made it taste very good to us.

How very--well, I guess the word is--gracious of God to do it this way. And hedonistic.

More thoughts on salt: What did Jesus mean?

I keep coming back to salt, in my thoughts these days. What did Jesus mean when he said (Matthew 5:13) that we are the “salt of the earth”? What does salt do?

Well, salt has two great properties.
First, of course, salt gives flavor to things. To cook with salt and to add salt to dishes just plain make them taste good! Without the addition of salt, meat and pasta and rice and vegetables and salads--even bread and many pastries--taste bland and insipid. We have to add salt to make these dishes taste good. Obvious!

But what is surely less obvious is the idea that that the world needs the salt that we provide—that the world is insipid and lacking in tastiness without the salt that we bring to it. Somewhat counter to most people’s thoughts on the deliciousness of the world, no? (Do most people believe they need Christ's truth for their life to seem tasty?) So why does the world need our salt to taste really good? The flavor and goodness that Christ’s salt (delivered by us) brings are clearly of a higher order than ordinary NaCl. Christ's salt gives a certain, well, bite! This shift to a higher order of meaning when Christ is speaking of food and drink is also very clear in his use of words such as water, wine, yeast and bread.

But this higher order savor of salt also brings us to its other great property—one which was particularly important in the past: salt purifies, protects, and preserves from corruption. This preservative function is of course why so many kinds of meat and fish were salted, before people routinely had access to refrigeration. Just think of bacon and salt pork, jerky, salted fish (such as bacalao), and so on. Meat and fish must still be salted and/or dried in many parts of the world.

But to move back up to the higher level of meaning: salt’s preservative quality is why it was a major element or "ingredient" in the offerings to God in the Old Testament and in the temple sacrifices--and why it is still important in the liturgies of baptism and the anointing of the sick. Salt is one of the symbols of eternal life: the soul is saved from corruption and death.

So, let’s keep adding the salt, literally and spiritually. We—and the world—all need it.

Sometime soon, some further thoughts on salt. (It is still on my mind.)

Can salt really lose its savor, its saltiness?

You recall that Jesus says: “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, what can make it salty again? If is good for nothing, and can only be thrown out to be trampled under people’s feet.” (Matthew 5:13)

I do understand the point that he is making. But—forgive my literal-mindedness—I have always wondered, can salt really—literally—lose its savor? (This is one of those dumb questions that have nagged at me--inveterate cook and foodie that I am!--for years.)

It turns out that certain kinds of salt can in fact lose their savor—their saltiness. This is the case of impure rock salt and of salt that has been formed by the evaporation of sea water, such as at the Dead Sea. These forms of salt--which are not pure sodium chloride (NaCl) but are mixed with other minerals--can lose their saline taste as they deteriorate.

Thought you’d like to know. (It put my mind at rest. Or rather, now I just have to try to do it--to be the right kind of salt.)