Ready-salted restaurant meals – a pinch too far?

My bugbear is salted salads – why would anyone pre-salt a salad for you??!! ‘Ready-salted lettuce? No thanks! There is always the option for salt-lovers of adding salt (and I mean ALWAYS – cafes, takeaways & posh restaurants alike) but you really can’t take it out!

I hate salted vegetables – generally it ruins their flavour. If this is what we feed children I’m not surprised they so often don’t like vegetables. Without salt many vegetables are sweet. Steamed they have even more flavour.

I like unsalted butter too.

I’m not saying I don’t like salt. I do. I will add it to the new potatoes on my plate with the butter.

Please don’t put it in because as someone else has already said YOU CAN’T TAKE IT OUT.

I agree with both Kat and lessismore above – it just doesn’t make any sense to sprinkle salt on top of something – a diner can always sprinkle it themselves when it comes to the table, but try picking salt off the top of a plate of chips!

I’m often quite surprised to see other people adding salt to water before they cook vegetables in it, or adding lots of salt to a soup or a sauce. Admittedly I’m not the best cook in the world, but I very rarely add salt to anything I cook, and it tastes fine to me.

I think Nikki makes a good point – just like many flavours, diners become accustomed to salt and that’s when they start to miss it. I have *never* cooked with salt unless it’s specifically stated in a recipe and find I’m quite sensitive to salty dishes. Yet I know many people who add salt to all their food without even trying it first.

I remember buying a Marks & Spencer’s primavera pasta sauce some years ago. I then added more peas and more peas and more peas until the whole pack was in there and it didn’t taste salty any more. I wonder how salty I’d find it now, several years on.

I also find that some pies eg chicken and vegetable are really only edible because of all the unsalted vegetables that we eat with them. I suspect it is the gravy that is oversalted.

Smiths crisps were good with the little blue bags – at first just twists – of salt.

I guess some marketing person then realised that if you salt everything people are likely to drink more.

I have worked as a food taster on a panel for a well-known ingredients company who would concoct the ingredients for sausage flavouring, crisps, mayonnaise etc.

My initial reaction to the thread is one of slight annoyance as it seems we are seeking to add a further layer of complexity to restaurants to suit a minority of people. Perhaps the case against salt is overstated as outlined in this article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2174511/Could-using-LESS-salt-bad-health.html

I always avoided taking my children to chain restaurants in case they got addicted to the pap offered and also because of poor value for money. If you learn to cook properly you can provide your children with good food. And cooking good food need be neither expensive or time consuming. It does require thought.

That some people salt their food before trying it is of course an abomination.

The UK’s track record on scaremongering and then retracting is illustrated by the guidance on exposure to sunshine which, with the increase in rickets in the UK, has been substantially changed from what was drummed into us by the Health bodies when they adopted the Australian guidance on exposure.

It seems that nobody fully appreciated that Australia if positioned in the Northern Hemisphere would be where Spain is and the sun in Spain is more potent that the watered down British version.

Anyway reverting to salt. If you sweat a lot you need more salt. And some people sweat more than others regardless. The idea that an average figure is suitable for all is obviously false from the outset and a range of figures should be allowed. This about endurance racing but you can see what happens with too little salt:
http://www.rice.edu/~jenky/sports/salt.html