Cooking corner: Which salt is best to use? The answer might surprise you

David W. Cowles

guest columnist

The word salary is derived from salarium, the Latin word for salt. According to legend, Roman soldiers were paid in salt, leading to the phrase “worth his salt.”

Salt is essential to life and also to enhance the flavor of our foods. However, most doctors agree that Americans consume far too much salt, leading to hypertension (high blood pressure) and other ailments.

Much of that salt comes from snack foods, such as potato chips, nuts and pretzels; condiments, such as ketchup and soy sauce; fast foods, especially french fries; and commercially processed foods, including canned soups, pickles and sandwich meats.

There are a number of ways to reduce your salt intake. Most obvious, of course, is to avoid foods that have a high salt content. Another is to taste your food before adding salt to it — it’s likely to be salty enough.

Try seasoning your food with something else, such as a squeeze of lemon or lime juice, or a small amount of citric acid (also called sour salt).

Or, use Morton Lite Salt, which contains just half of the sodium of regular salt.

Mrs. Dash (made by Alberto-Culver Company, the manufacturer of shampoo, hair conditioner and related products) has 13 different salt-free spice blends said to improve the flavor of food. I haven’t found one of them that I like.

You can also deceive yourself by using kosher salt instead of regular salt at the dinner table. Spoonful by spoonful, kosher salt is less salty than table salt, so it looks like you’re adding more salt than you really are.

While a pound of salt always weighs a pound — remember Gertrude Stein’s famous line, “A rose is a rose is a rose” — because of its larger grain sizes and a more open granular structure, a cup of kosher salt weighs less than a cup of table salt.

Thus, when recipes call for salt by the measure rather than by weight, when using kosher salt you’ll need to increase the quantity.

That’s complicated by the fact that not all kosher salts weigh the same. Ordinary table salt weighs 10.2 ounces per cup. Morton’s kosher salt weighs 8.1 ounces per cup. Diamond Crystal kosher salt weighs only five ounces per cup.

Stated another way: If a recipe calls for four teaspoons of table salt, you’ll need to use five teaspoons of Morton kosher salt or eight teaspoons of Diamond Crystal kosher salt.

Iodized salt

Iodized salt was the first instance of an ingredient being added to a product solely for health reasons.

It was determined that people in certain parts of the United States — most notably the Great Lakes region — were not getting enough iodine in their diet. This lack resulted in endemic goiter and other iodine-deficiency disorders, such as mental retardation and cretinism.

Salt producers cooperated with public health officials and, beginning in 1924, made both iodized and plain salt available to consumers at the same price.

Morton Lite Salt

Potassium is a necessary nutrient for human beings. Some years ago, after reviewing the results of my blood test, a doctor suggested that I take potassium chloride pills.

As they were quite expensive, with my doctor’s approval, I bought Morton Lite Salt instead.

Lite Salt contains 50 percent potassium chloride and 50 percent sodium chloride. It’s sold primarily to people who want to restrict their sodium intake, but it can also be used to increase one’s potassium intake.

To this day, I use Morton Lite Salt in place of regular salt at the dinner table. An 11-ounce shaker box costs about $1.

Caution must be used with potassium chloride. Whereas a small amount is extremely beneficial, too much can be deadly.

These days, instead of being hanged by the neck, decapitated by guillotine, shot by a firing squad, fried in an electric chair or suffocated and poisoned with cyanide gas, most people who are legally executed receive an injection of a potassium chloride solution.

I did a little research on the Internet and found out that each 11-ounce box of Morton Lite Salt contains enough potassium chloride to do away with seven adults and one child.

Morton also makes potassium chloride pellets for water softeners. Imagine how many people you could murder with a 50-pound bag of those!

Which type to use

As I mentioned above, I use Morton Lite Salt at the dinner table because of its potassium chloride content.

I use seasoned salt on meats, poultry, seafood, in salad dressings, and for many cooking applications, because of its flavor.

For baking and much of my other cooking, I use kosher salt.

While iodized salt helps prevent IDD, for various reasons it’s not the best choice for canning, brining, making pickles and sauerkraut, meat rubs, in recipes that call for a salt crust, salting the rims of margarita glasses or other applications.

For those purposes, I use kosher salt, which does not contain iodine. And, of course, kosher salt should be used if you kosher meat for religious reasons — but that’s not the subject of this dissertation.

Don’t waste your money on expensive sea salt. Even though there is a slight difference in taste, if you sample a pinch of sea salt and a pinch of regular salt without food, I defy you to discern any difference in foods salted with sea salt.

MSG

What I don’t ever use is MSG — the flavor enhancer that, at one time, was as common as salt in virtually every Asian restaurant.

Today, we know that ingestion of MSG can have serious health consequences, and conscientious restaurateurs no longer put it in their foods.

Monosodium glutamate causes what’s known as the “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” — burning sensations or numbness along the back of the neck, forearms and chest; tingling, warmth and weakness in the face, temples, upper back, neck and arms; facial pressure or tightness; chest tightness or pain; headache; nausea; rapid heartbeat; bronchospasm (difficulty breathing); drowsiness; weakness; and sweating.

MSG is still used in far too many commercial products. You’ll find it in a plethora of processed products, including Campbell’s soups, Lay’s flavored potato chips, Doritos, Betty Crocker Hamburger Helper, Heinz canned gravy, Swanson frozen meals, Kraft salad dressings — the list goes on. Canned and packaged foods are filled with the stuff!

In sufficient quantities, MSG is toxic to everyone. To those who cannot metabolize it effectively, even small doses can act like a poison.

Women who ingest MSG while pregnant increase the risk of their fetus having a smaller pituitary, thyroid, ovary or testes. It can make people more sensitive to products containing aspartame (NutraSweet). And, it is suspected that MSG may be a causative factor in Alzheimer’s disease, ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and Parkinson’s disease.

My advice to you? If you have any MSG in your cabinets (sold under the brand names Accent and Aginomoto, among others), throw it out immediately! Then, read the labels of commercially prepared foods and refuse to buy any product that contains it.

But watch out! MSG is often hidden in foods with labels that boldly state “No MSG” or “No added MSG.” Yet they contain hydrolyzed protein, hydrolyzed corn gluten, autolyzed yeast, carrageenan, sodium caseinate, enzymes, or a whole slew of other deceptively named ingredients, all of which contain or create processed free glutamic acid (MSG) during manufacture.

Want more reasons why you shouldn’t eat foods containing MSG? Just Google MSG or monosodium glutamate and go from Web page to Web page!

To find out more about what kind of salt is best for you, visit these Web sites:

www.gourmetsleuth.com/saltguide.htm

www.truthinlabeling.org/nomsg.html

www.truthinlabeling.org/hiddensources.html

Reach David W. Cowles, the Fastest Chef in the West, at dwcowles-gateway@comcast.net.