Sugar and salt

[mtbc]

In Britain many brands of non-diet soda contain artificial sweeteners and there is currently talk of taxing sugary drinks. The tax is a good idea and I would be happy about it if I didn't expect them to further substitute with other sweeteners. mst3kmoxie prefers to avoid artificial sweeteners because she is suspicious of their safety and, like her, I often find that non-sugar sweeteners don't quite taste right, even Stevia, which is disappointing. I am happy to have sugary drinks only infrequently but I'd rather that a few of them could just be less sweet instead of more artificially sweetened.

The same goes for salt, really. Not only do I not have much of a sweet tooth but I also rarely add salt when I am cooking. Much convenience food, especially soup, tastes too salty for me. At least there aren't strange non-salt substitutes, as far as I know. My weakness is more for foods like mature cheese.

Comments

[gerald_duck]

I definitely file potassium chloride under "strange non-salt substitutes". It doesn't taste anything approaching right, and if it turns out excess potassium is at least as harmful as excess sodium I won't be in the least surprised.

Meanwhile, it's not actually clear salt is genuinely a health problem, and only about 10% of the population is predisposed to high blood pressure as a result of increased salt intake.

Historically, I've had a savoury tooth, not a sweet one. This has served me well. Unfortunately, some complicated life events two years ago exposed me to far more sweet foods than I was used to — sugar is indeed addictive I'm trying to wean myself back off them.