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By Root 619 0

and adopt a twenty-five-cup-a-day water habit. You pour the wet stuff in so fast and furious that after a few days your cells become slightly flooded, diluting your electrolytes (the power workers of the body). This results in a slowing of neural transmissions. Your spatial judgment becomes impaired, as do your balance and reflexes. So instead of stepping over that cigar butt, you trip over it, falling off the train platform in front of the oncoming uptown express. And all because you didn’t eat your salt. Shame on you.

IRONY PART II

You’re in the middle of the ocean in a raft. You have no water supply with you so you take a nice long drink of seawater. Soon you find you’re thirsty again so you drink more . . . and more. Trouble is, seawater is just salty enough that you can never quite get enough water to flush the excess salt. Your cells, desperate to balance osmotic pressure, dump water until they shrivel and parch. Your heart turns into a spastic drum machine and your nervous system freaks as your kidneys lose their dictatorlike grasp on your body chemistry. Tomorrow you’re raving mad. The day after that you’re dead. Shame on you.

Think I’m whacked? Try to explain this: On average, Japanese people consume twice as much salt as Americans yet they have the gall to live an average of ten years longer.6

Now, despite the fact that the 1970s tied salt to the stake, the 80s stacked the wood, and the 90s lit the match, the guys in the white lab coats have finally gotten hip to what the guys in the white kitchen coats have known all along: salt is good . . . salt works. In fact, a healthy adult can pretty much put salt out of his or her mind as long as he or she (a) has two functioning kidneys; and (b) drinks plenty of water.

When it comes to the actual act of seasoning there are a couple of things to keep in mind:

• Salt all dish components separately. Just because you salted the dressing doesn’t mean you shouldn’t salt the greens.

• Salt should be added when it can do the most good: during or even before cooking. Liberally salt the water the potatoes cook in and they will be properly seasoned. Wait to season them at the table and you’ll have flat-tasting potatoes covered in little rocks. In some cases salt can be added well before cooking, while in others it should be added just before.

FOR THE RECORD

• Salt is mentioned more times in the Bible than any other food.

• The word salary derives from the Latin word for salt and refers to the money Roman soldiers were paid specifically for the purchase of salt. Thus, to be worth your salt is to earn your pay.

• The French Revolution began as a protest against the grabelle, a salt tax.

• Salzburg means “salt castle.”

• In Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, Judas is seen spilling salt, a symbol of betrayal.

• In Arab lands, the sharing of salt implies an unbreakable bond.

• In some European societies, salt is thrown over one’s shoulder to hinder the devil, who’s always sneaking up on you.

• Before mechanical refrigeration was available, salting was the leading method of food preservation.

IODINE AND SALT

If the human machine doesn’t get enough iodine, the thyroid gland gets mad. Then it gets even by getting big and sprouting cysts, which give the unlucky victim the neck of a bullfrog in mid-croak. Although you’re not likely to spot a goiter while strolling through your local mall, there was a time when goiters were a common sight. In the early days of the twentieth century, goiter reached epidemic levels in the Midwest. The fix was to add iodine to something of universal use: salt. The problem deflated overnight. Actually, the best source of dietary iodine is seafood and since it’s a lot more available than it used to be it’s tough to find a good goiter . . . unless you travel to Africa, Asia, or parts of South America.

ME: I often season meats several minutes before cooking them.

YOU: Eeek. Don’t you know that pulls juices out of the meat?

ME: Yes.

YOU: (stunned silence)

ME: Coaxing fluids to