As with all things that taste good but just might kill you, salt appears to be coming under fire. It was one thing with the crusades against MSG, coconut oil, and transfats; most people don’t know what those are exactly, but they sound like they could be dangerous, so we might as well be rid of them, even if it changes the face of delicious food as we know it.
Can you still call it "Original Recipe" if it's missing my precious transfats?
But this time around, it’s different. This is salt we’re talking about. This is the most important spice in the history of spices, and that includes ones we have to mine from other planets. This is an ingredient that ran the world for hundreds of years, started and ended countless wars, and the control of which could raise and topple empires. This is the magical element that can make water boil and terrible food taste vaguely edible. This is the default flavor of most breakfast items at restaurants. This is the substance whose grains make us so much more level headed in the face of rumors. This is the stuff that makes aliens learn to shapeshift just to kill us for it. This is the only flavoring material I know of to get its own movie deal.
Who knew flavor was so sexy?
My point is, salt is so great the world will be jumping to its defense the moment there’s even the slightest detraction brought to its name, right? Surely the Salt Institute, the world’s foremost salt advocate, could come up with legitimate defenses in their sleep over this, right?
Well, recent appearances indicate otherwise. With thousands of years of human history screaming about how great salt is, the best defenses they’ve come up with is liberal use of the term “food police” (said while hoping the ghost of George Orwell doesn’t sue them for criminally lame attempts at villainizing someone) and staunch denial that too much of a good thing results in anything remotely negative, even if that good thing is made by combining two horrifyingly poisonous materials. This level of defense is embarrassing, and as a result, I propose a simple campaign to restore the good name of salt.
Namely, just point out the obvious.
Ladies and gentlemen, you already know that most things that taste good aren’t healthy for you, and even the ones that are fine are not meant to be consumed in Brobdignagian levels. That said, this is still salt we’re talking about. I mean seriously, it’s so delicious. It goes on anything, it makes everything better, and let’s face it, eggs would be just inedible otherwise. So what if the average person sucks in more salt than Galactus, I’ve got two words that will make all the health problems in the world seem like perfectly acceptable collateral damage: French Fries. The world in which we live is an ugly, cruel, depressing place that has a dangerously high level of ways it can kill you at a moment’s notice. One of the few solidarities we get in this life is food made delicious via salt, and if we choose to enjoy it in copious amounts, that’s between us and the bathroom scale (or the doctor, that depends entirely on us). My point is so what if it will lead you to an early grave. Give me a good reason to believe that’s not a decent trade off. Honesty is the best policy, so we’re just going to lay out the fact for you: you can either eat healthy, avoid indulgences, and live to a ripe old age, spending your abnormally long twilight years in an old folks’ home wishing your kids would visit you more often, or you can pile on those glorious little crystals, and die young with a smile on your face [:)] and a grin in your belly [?]. THERE ARE NO OTHER OPTIONS!
I can guarantee you, salt, air this in your ads and you will not see any decline in sales whatsoever. In fact, you’d probably get some kind of award for corporate honestly or something. Or really, don’t do anything at all. Salt is very, very popular, and it’s not going to go the way of transfats and lose its place in established recipes.
Bucket full of LIES!!
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