How much salt is too much salt? | Kitchen Aid
My wife criticizes me for adding salt to my pasta water and seasoning my food while cooking - a pinch of salt while I'm cooking my mushrooms elevates them. How do I maintain reasonable salt levels and should I add it to my mushrooms on toast? nothing happens: according to the NHS, adults should eat no more than 6g of salt per day (i.e. around a teaspoon), but Action on Salt says we eat around 8, 1g per day on average. So Nick's wife is correct that we have a problem with the salt.
To answer her question, however, you have to step back and look at what you eat as a whole. “Overall, pre-cooked, ultra-processed, store-bought foods contain a relatively high amount of salt,” says Dr. Saliha Mahmood Ahmed, author of The Kitchen Prescription and former MasterChef winner. By this she means ready meals, pasta sauces, crisps, etc. If a large portion of your diet is made up of such foods, then, says Ahmed, you're probably consuming too much salt. However, if Nick cooks mostly from scratch and avoids very salty foods in the first place, then his mushrooms are in luck: "That's probably OK," says Ahmed. That said, beware of the salt hidden in, say, toast: a study by Action on Salt found that three out of four packaged sliced breads sold in supermarkets contain as much (or more) salt per slice than a bag of already salted crisps.
And salt is a tricky thing to avoid. As Samin Nosrat writes in Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, “Salt has a greater impact on flavor than any other ingredient. Learn how to use it well, and your food will taste great. Although herbs and spices do not replace salt in your cooking, they can help you if you want to reduce your intake. "When you introduce the complexity of flavor profiles, whether it's citrus or floral or whatever, there's an argument that then you can reduce the salt levels, because you also have a lot of other flavours," says Ahmed.
But Nick might also want to ask himself if he has developed too much tolerance for this product: "Palate training is also important," says Ahmed, "because even small amounts of salt change the way food tastes very quickly. As with any delicate relationship, sometimes you have to stop and re-evaluate: has it become desirable to me? Do I feel like I can't taste my food without salt?" And don't be tempted to cook on autopilot. Example: as Ahmed salts the water in cooking his pasta, "that light, inherent seasoning of pasta means you don't need the same amount of salt in the sauce".
As with most things in life, it pays to be mindful: "Salt is one of the first things you taste," says Ahmed. "If you spend time chewing your food, tasting all the flavors, smelling the salt, maybe you'll find you've added too much." Well, that's the hope, anyway.
Have a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com
My wife criticizes me for adding salt to my pasta water and seasoning my food while cooking - a pinch of salt while I'm cooking my mushrooms elevates them. How do I maintain reasonable salt levels and should I add it to my mushrooms on toast? nothing happens: according to the NHS, adults should eat no more than 6g of salt per day (i.e. around a teaspoon), but Action on Salt says we eat around 8, 1g per day on average. So Nick's wife is correct that we have a problem with the salt.
To answer her question, however, you have to step back and look at what you eat as a whole. “Overall, pre-cooked, ultra-processed, store-bought foods contain a relatively high amount of salt,” says Dr. Saliha Mahmood Ahmed, author of The Kitchen Prescription and former MasterChef winner. By this she means ready meals, pasta sauces, crisps, etc. If a large portion of your diet is made up of such foods, then, says Ahmed, you're probably consuming too much salt. However, if Nick cooks mostly from scratch and avoids very salty foods in the first place, then his mushrooms are in luck: "That's probably OK," says Ahmed. That said, beware of the salt hidden in, say, toast: a study by Action on Salt found that three out of four packaged sliced breads sold in supermarkets contain as much (or more) salt per slice than a bag of already salted crisps.
And salt is a tricky thing to avoid. As Samin Nosrat writes in Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, “Salt has a greater impact on flavor than any other ingredient. Learn how to use it well, and your food will taste great. Although herbs and spices do not replace salt in your cooking, they can help you if you want to reduce your intake. "When you introduce the complexity of flavor profiles, whether it's citrus or floral or whatever, there's an argument that then you can reduce the salt levels, because you also have a lot of other flavours," says Ahmed.
But Nick might also want to ask himself if he has developed too much tolerance for this product: "Palate training is also important," says Ahmed, "because even small amounts of salt change the way food tastes very quickly. As with any delicate relationship, sometimes you have to stop and re-evaluate: has it become desirable to me? Do I feel like I can't taste my food without salt?" And don't be tempted to cook on autopilot. Example: as Ahmed salts the water in cooking his pasta, "that light, inherent seasoning of pasta means you don't need the same amount of salt in the sauce".
As with most things in life, it pays to be mindful: "Salt is one of the first things you taste," says Ahmed. "If you spend time chewing your food, tasting all the flavors, smelling the salt, maybe you'll find you've added too much." Well, that's the hope, anyway.
Have a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com
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