Cheez-its that taste medicinal. Metallic cornflakes. Eggo waffles that remind you of “stale straw”.  Meat that calls to mind cardboard or damp dog hair.

If the recent government effort to reduce salt in processed foods is successful, this is what we will have to eat.  Or so says the food industry according to an astonishing front page article in yesterday’s New York Times (free subscr reqd).

Compared to reducing fat and sugar, for which substitute ingredients have been found, eliminating salt and sodium is turning out to be a major challenge for these companies.  Why is that?  It turns out that without salt – lots and lots of salt – we eaters might discover that the stuff that is being sold to us as delicious, tantalizing and even healthy “food” is really nothing of the sort.

It’s a marketing problem.  Without salt to hide the true nature of these products, we might not buy them.   Why not?  It turns out they don’t taste very good: Read more »