I haven't used salt in cooking for the last 30-odd years - since my dad had his first high blood pressure warnings, prior to his heart attacks - and I haven't missed it at all. I like to add all sorts of spices to my cooking, but I choose not to use salt, and I am more than happy with the results. My wife usually adds salt from a shaker, mainly because she has low blood pressure.
I also have never watched TV cooking shows on a regular basis, only by accident in dental waiting rooms, electronics stores, etc. But, based on the odd ones I have seen, I have been struck by the ridiculous amounts if salt they add to their dishes.
Now, everybody will tell you that salt brings out the flavours of the dish (just Google "do cooking shows use too much salt" for example - lots of people are asking that question). The other phrase I see used ad nauseam is "salt makes food taste more like itself".
At this point, I call BS. Adding salt just makes food taste saltier, not "more like itself". To have food taste like itself, you would need to not add anything to it, QED. Now, you might not like that, and you might prefer the taste of it with salt, but don't give me this crap about food tasting "more like itself". It's a meaningless and disingenuous claim that chefs and foodies have latched onto en masse.
The world's tastes, and North American tastes in particular, have been coloured by decades, nay centuries, of excess salt, and any food not seasoned with salt will taste bland and unappealing to them. It's not just cooking shows that over-salt, incidentally, it's restaurants and private individuals in their own kitchens. And don't get me started on pre-prepared foods in supermarkets... But cooking shows are the apotheosis, the ne plus ultra, of over-salting. I sometimes wonder how many heart attacks they are responsible for.
The bottom line, though, is: salt does not make food better, just different (I would say "saltier"). I realize this is me against the world, but I know I am right on this.
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