salt

I read with dismay in the Independent recently that plans are afoot in
the city of New York to ban the use of salt in restaurants "in any
form in the preparation of food for consumption by customers, whether
on or off the premises". Now, you may think that what happens in the
city of New York isn't relevant to us here, but beware – much of what
happens in the good ole US of A eventually makes its way over the
pond, especially knee-jerk nanny-state legislation promoted by a
legislature anxious to be seen to be doing something proactive for the
well-being of its citizens.

Nobody would deny that the overconsumption of salt is detrimental to
health but to impose a blanket ban on its use in restaurants is both
disingenuous and short-sighted. Salt has played a huge part in our
history – so highly prized was it in ancient times that Roman soldiers
were paid in it (hence the word "salary" – derived from the Latin sal
for salt). The British would never have become a great sea-faring
nation without the preservative properties of salt – how else could
our sailors have stayed at sea for months at a time? I'm sure their
lives were hard and many died young, but probably not from salt-
related coronary heart disease. My own grandmother lived to the ripe
old age of 87 and I remember vividly the Georgian silver cruet on her
dining table and the ritual sprinkling of almost everything she ate
with a few grains of salt. What she never did, however, was to eat
anything processed – and herein lies the real culprit for our
overconsumption of sodium chloride: processed foods and fast food rely
on huge amounts of salt (and sugar) to make their products even
vaguely palatable. One randomly picked single portion Birdseye ready
meal contained 90% of the adult RDA – add a good squirt of ketchup and
a pack of Pringles and you've doubled your daily recommended allowance
in one go.

A blanket ban on the use of salt in restaurants is not going to make
the problem of its overconsumption go away. The uncaring majority will
still eat their way to an early grave on junk food and crisps. The
real losers will be the ones who care about what they eat and those
who cater for them when they go out. Who can resist the sublime taste
of a few flakes of Maldon on a pat of Lescure unsalted butter? Will we
no longer be able to serve the delights of a confit de canard or a
salt-baked seabass? And what about crackling, bacon, ham and countless
other foods that rely on the judicious use of salt to make them shine?
Are we seriously all to be reduced to the bland mediocrity of hospital
food?

You may think it's never going to happen, but just beware; I for one
wouldn't be surprised to find myself forced to cook without salt in
the not too distant future, seeing my customers disappear to the
toilet to snort a line of Saxa, no doubt cut with baking powder by an
unscrupulous dealer, or the furtive man out in the street, accosting
prospective patrons – "Psst! Wanna buy a wrap of Maldon?" Imagine the
TV news headlines – "Customs today seized a shipment of Himalayan
Mountain salt with a street value of £15m…". And I suppose some
restaurant mergers would produce appropriate names - how about All Bar
Salt?

Personally, if this hideous piece of legislation ever makes it over
the Atlantic, We should kidnap the vote-hungry minister responsible
and force him, like the king in the fairy tale, to eat all his meals
prepared without any salt whatsoever – he'd be crying for mercy within
24 hours….