The debate rages on over whether dietary salt (NaCl) increases the risk of cardiovascular events, with no clear answer in sight. Yet few people are paying attention to another, more insidious effect of salt: it may increase our calorie intake, and eventually, the size of our waistlines.
Introduction
Humans are born with specific hard-wired food motivations, which guide us to food properties that kept our ancestors alive and fertile in times past. We have an instinctive attraction to sweetness because, in the world of our ancestors, it indicated ripe fruit or honey-- both important sources of calories and other nutrients. Most of the other food properties we're instinctively drawn to, such as starch, fat, and glutamate, signify high-calorie foods.
Yet one of our hard-wired food motivations stands out from the rest: our attraction to salt. Since salt is calorie-free, salt appetite is one of the few instinctive food drives that doesn't relate directly to acquiring calories. Interestingly, salt is the only essential micronutrient (vitamin/mineral) we can taste at the concentrations normally found in food. Not only our brains, but also our tongues, are hard-wired to seek salt above all other micronutrients.
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