To salt or not to salt, that is the question...

I was having dinner with a friend the other night.  We share a meal frequently and I’ve learned to add a lot of salt to whatever I cook for us when he comes.  You see he likes salt, a lot of salt.  Sometimes I’m to the point of gagging because the food’s so salty and he’s just fine with it.  Now I’ve tried using other spices to flavor the food to cut down on the need for salt.  It doesn’t work, he just reaches for the salt shaker and dumps a bunch on.  Then tells me I’m being too cheap with the salt.  A while back someone told me this taste for salt has to do with where we grew up respectively.  I grew up in a desert area, dry and hot in the summer.  You don’t sweat.  Thus, no need to crave salt.  As where my friend grew up in the tropics, hot, humid most of the year.  You sweat, a lot.  You crave salt to replace those lost fluids.  Not sure if this is correct logic or not.  Personally, I think it’s more a matter of how our parents cooked.   But as I reflected more on his life and mine, I had to wonder if there was more to this than meets the eye.  His life as been filed with adventure, mine has been rather sedate.  So, is our taste in food a reflection of our lifestyles?  Mine bland and rather boring?  His salty, rich and full of flavor?  Or is this just another one of those things I’m reading too much into – salt is just salt?

Sprinkle some on and move on to something else...