Do you like a little salt with your chips? Do you sprinkle it on
your tomatoes? Have you got one of those handy, fashionable little pots
that innocuously sits near your cooker that is filled with either rock
or sea salt so you can just add a little to your dishes while cooking?
If you say yes to any of these it's a possibility you are overdosing on
the stuff. Heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure, they say, it's
all waiting for us if we don't get our act together.
How can we do this? These days salt is everywhere. Back in the day, not too much snacking was done, certainly manufactured treats were only kept for special occasions, in the days when we mostly ate fresh fruit and vegetables, homemade bread, and had meat just a couple of times a week, it would have been easy not to have had too much salt, but today salt is added as a flavour enhancer to most of our processed foods; so we haven't got a chance if these groceries make up most of your daily diet. To be fair I think a lot of us are completely confused. We get so much conflicting messages; especially today with the array of stylish cookery and food programmes thrown at us weekly, we are seeing top chefs throwing the salt around here, there, and everywhere. Stock cubes are used in abundance: and we all know they are full of salt, but we see them being rubbed into, sprinkled on, mixed with, and added to dishes 'to enhance the flavour' Surely these cheery learned presenting professionals must be all too aware of the dangers of exceeding the recommended daily amount?
Maybe they just know without this enchanting ingredient, their food would taste bland and boring and we wouldn't rush out to buy their cookery books so readily. I think, as usual we have to examine the evidence ourselves. If what our grandparents were doing before the advent of us all eating too much monosodium glutamate, salt, sodium, smoked foods, processed, cured and dried foods and, being healthier for it: maybe the answer is to just cut back generally.
For me, it would be sacrilege to give up having salt on my chips. We all enjoy our food tasting nice and our taste buds are our rulers, and we must obey. Until we can adjust to the taste of anything without this enhancer, we are at the mercy of our finely tuned papillae receptors. We could use half the amount we usually use,that would help lessen the burden to our bodies, and perhaps we could substitute where applicable. However parsley, chopped, or any other way, is just no replacement for a good old grinding of salt on the chips. So my ethos is, 'have a little of what you like' and the rest of the time, be 'good'. If we all just ate a little less we wouldn't have to worry so much, and maybe draw the line at too many snacks, well at least 'unhealthy' ones, like salted nuts, crisps, low- fat treats (which are often full of salt or sugar).
Swapping herbs for salt, for flavour, is a really good idea, and one that is as old as the hills. Without the benefit of a handy bottle or box of processed salt our ancient ancestors used herbs of all kinds, some we wouldn't even recognise as using today, to add to their cook pot. My grandmother always used a handful; fresh from the garden, for cooking in each meal, and in the mornings used a few herbs often with a slice of lemon in a mug of hot water to break her fast. She swore parsley eased the griping pains of indigestion, sang the praises of Sage too, for being a marvelous herb, and confided, helped make a great stuffing; it is a natural antiseptic and useful for sore throats, Rosemary and Thyme are also simultaneously beneficial in cooking and in warding off bilious attacks, aches and pains, fevers and much more, now surely that can't be a coincidence. And I've never heard anyone unconsciously overdosing on parsley to any ill effect.
Food and herbs were meant for each other. Have you ever tried these combinations? Give strawberries a little sprinkle of black pepper, wow, it's great, try, sprinkling cinnamon on your roast parsnips, stud juniper berries in venison before cooking, use anchovies, which are naturally very salty as a replacement accompaniment when you want that extra 'bite' to your dishes. Give the edge to green beans, peas and cabbage by adding fresh chopped Dill to them once cooked. Try stuffing sardines with fresh Mint to cut the grease and enhance its natural flavours.
These 'marriages' and more can be enjoyable, as well as adding health benefits to our everyday love affair and necessity we have with eating. If we were to swap salt for herbs when cooking we might grow to appreciate the actual flavour of the food more. We won't want to abandon it all together, how could we? I think our bodies know we need it, it's vital to life, but we could start seeing it in a different way and remind ourselves, everything has its right place and we can have too much of a good thing sometimes. Salt, on the other hand is great for keeping the car from skidding in the winter, and very useful in the manufacturing of glass, textiles, rubber and leather. As usual us humans are a greedy bunch and if it's there and it's good, well, why not have it! and as well as being greedy we can be lazy, and I don't think anyone wants to put the effort into finding out how to use Basil in the production of rubber!
How can we do this? These days salt is everywhere. Back in the day, not too much snacking was done, certainly manufactured treats were only kept for special occasions, in the days when we mostly ate fresh fruit and vegetables, homemade bread, and had meat just a couple of times a week, it would have been easy not to have had too much salt, but today salt is added as a flavour enhancer to most of our processed foods; so we haven't got a chance if these groceries make up most of your daily diet. To be fair I think a lot of us are completely confused. We get so much conflicting messages; especially today with the array of stylish cookery and food programmes thrown at us weekly, we are seeing top chefs throwing the salt around here, there, and everywhere. Stock cubes are used in abundance: and we all know they are full of salt, but we see them being rubbed into, sprinkled on, mixed with, and added to dishes 'to enhance the flavour' Surely these cheery learned presenting professionals must be all too aware of the dangers of exceeding the recommended daily amount?
Maybe they just know without this enchanting ingredient, their food would taste bland and boring and we wouldn't rush out to buy their cookery books so readily. I think, as usual we have to examine the evidence ourselves. If what our grandparents were doing before the advent of us all eating too much monosodium glutamate, salt, sodium, smoked foods, processed, cured and dried foods and, being healthier for it: maybe the answer is to just cut back generally.
For me, it would be sacrilege to give up having salt on my chips. We all enjoy our food tasting nice and our taste buds are our rulers, and we must obey. Until we can adjust to the taste of anything without this enhancer, we are at the mercy of our finely tuned papillae receptors. We could use half the amount we usually use,that would help lessen the burden to our bodies, and perhaps we could substitute where applicable. However parsley, chopped, or any other way, is just no replacement for a good old grinding of salt on the chips. So my ethos is, 'have a little of what you like' and the rest of the time, be 'good'. If we all just ate a little less we wouldn't have to worry so much, and maybe draw the line at too many snacks, well at least 'unhealthy' ones, like salted nuts, crisps, low- fat treats (which are often full of salt or sugar).
Swapping herbs for salt, for flavour, is a really good idea, and one that is as old as the hills. Without the benefit of a handy bottle or box of processed salt our ancient ancestors used herbs of all kinds, some we wouldn't even recognise as using today, to add to their cook pot. My grandmother always used a handful; fresh from the garden, for cooking in each meal, and in the mornings used a few herbs often with a slice of lemon in a mug of hot water to break her fast. She swore parsley eased the griping pains of indigestion, sang the praises of Sage too, for being a marvelous herb, and confided, helped make a great stuffing; it is a natural antiseptic and useful for sore throats, Rosemary and Thyme are also simultaneously beneficial in cooking and in warding off bilious attacks, aches and pains, fevers and much more, now surely that can't be a coincidence. And I've never heard anyone unconsciously overdosing on parsley to any ill effect.
Food and herbs were meant for each other. Have you ever tried these combinations? Give strawberries a little sprinkle of black pepper, wow, it's great, try, sprinkling cinnamon on your roast parsnips, stud juniper berries in venison before cooking, use anchovies, which are naturally very salty as a replacement accompaniment when you want that extra 'bite' to your dishes. Give the edge to green beans, peas and cabbage by adding fresh chopped Dill to them once cooked. Try stuffing sardines with fresh Mint to cut the grease and enhance its natural flavours.
These 'marriages' and more can be enjoyable, as well as adding health benefits to our everyday love affair and necessity we have with eating. If we were to swap salt for herbs when cooking we might grow to appreciate the actual flavour of the food more. We won't want to abandon it all together, how could we? I think our bodies know we need it, it's vital to life, but we could start seeing it in a different way and remind ourselves, everything has its right place and we can have too much of a good thing sometimes. Salt, on the other hand is great for keeping the car from skidding in the winter, and very useful in the manufacturing of glass, textiles, rubber and leather. As usual us humans are a greedy bunch and if it's there and it's good, well, why not have it! and as well as being greedy we can be lazy, and I don't think anyone wants to put the effort into finding out how to use Basil in the production of rubber!
Lois Evans enjoys swapping for health, wealth, and happiness and invites you to join her blog at http://www.qualityswaps.posterous.com/
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lois_Evans
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