Why do you need to salt food at the end of cooking? Why do we salt food? From the tongue to the brain: what is taste and why you shouldn’t trust it
Adding table salt to tree trunks in the garden promotes abundant fruiting and improves the quality of fruits
Salt is an indirect fertilizer
“Salting” your beds is a tried and true technique for improving plant nutrition. It was popular in the old days, when it was not easy to obtain mineral fertilizers for personal farming. However, even today we can recommend that summer residents apply this agrotechnical technique on their estate.
Salt is an indirect fertilizer. When table salt (NaCl) is added to the soil substrate, the dissolution of nutrients improves, and they begin to be more fully absorbed by plants.
This technique is especially effective on poor sandy soils. Root crops do not grow very well in such conditions. Beets, for example, ripen completely unsweetened, and carrots are bitter, and the bitterness intensifies during storage. If you “salt” the beds, then the sugar content of the beets will increase, and the carrots will store much more carotene.
In July-August, root crops are actively gaining strength. It is during this period that it is useful to feed them. Dissolve a tablespoon of table salt in a bucket of water, stir well and pour onto the beds with root vegetables. But first, don’t forget to water the beds thoroughly. In dry soil, the effect of salt will be zero. Well-watered soil can simply be salted from a salt shaker.
Today we have the opportunity to purchase any fertilizer, so instead of salt we recommend using sodium nitrate. And also, be sure to feed the root crops with potassium fertilizers - a tablespoon per square meter of bed.
Adding table salt to the tree trunks in the garden promotes abundant fruiting and improves the quality of the fruit. This procedure is recommended to be carried out in the spring, before the snow has completely melted.
But don’t get carried away with the “salty” stuff. Heavily salinizing the soil is harmful. After using table salt, be sure to add an increased dose of organic matter in the fall. published
Everyone seems to know that this is how it should be done. And no one does. Oh, in vain.
This is what the salt norm per day looks like for each of us - 5-6 g:
And this is what the portion we consume daily looks like:
It's very simple to explain: we don't know how to salt food.
Remember:
Undissolved salt penetrates the product rather slowly. Therefore, salt crystals from the surface of food fall directly onto the taste buds of the oral cavity and cause the sensation of saltiness of the food. To salt the entire dish to the same taste would require significantly more salt.
Salt dissolved in water (broth, decoction) is absorbed faster and more intensely by foods, which means more of it is required. Salt the soup immediately before eating - reduce the amount of salt significantly.
Iodized or sea salt loses iodine during heat treatment. If you want to preserve nutrients, add salt to food before eating.
Salt complicates the cooking process and even spoils some foods!
In the presence of salt, the cell membrane of some products becomes thicker. This makes it difficult for them to become soft during cooking. Therefore, solid foods (for example, beans) in salt water are cooked through longer heat treatment. It is very difficult to boil even ordinary potatoes in sour cabbage soup until soft. And meat or liver salted at the beginning of cooking will always be tough.
Salt inhibits the process of softening the gluten of flour. Therefore, salty baked goods are not so porous, fluffy and soft. Although a small amount of salt helps maintain the shape of the product. Because of this, the spice is added a little to all flour products, even sweet ones.
The presence of salt slightly increases the boiling point of the liquid. Those. foods in a salty solution will cook at temperatures exceeding one hundred degrees Celsius. This should be taken into account when strict temperature conditions are required, for example, when preparing porridge or stewing.
Salt helps to release juice from food. This can only be useful if the juice of the product is bitter and it is better to remove it before cooking (for example, this is what you do with eggplants). Salads should be salted immediately before serving, and fried meat should be salted only after a golden brown crust appears.
Salt is absorbed more evenly into an almost finished product than into a raw product. Therefore, adding spices at the end of cooking ensures that all parts of the dish taste the same.
During heat treatment, especially long-term cooking, the volume of the dish changes due to the evaporation of liquid. When adding salt at the beginning of cooking, there is a high risk of oversalting the dish. When the food is almost ready, it is easy to estimate the amount of salt needed for the final product.
We perceive salt and sugar as products that give a dish a salty or sweet taste, which is logical. However, the much more important function of salt and sugar is to serve as flavor enhancers, just like the dreaded “glutamate.” Actually, proper salting enhances the taste, and does not make the dish salty.
No, of course, there are dishes that should taste salty - beer snacks, for example, as well as dried fish, meat and other salted foods - where salt plays the role of a preservative. But in other cases, you need to salt so that you don’t feel the salt, so you need to salt all dishes, including sweet ones.
For example, if you cook sweet milk oatmeal or rice porridge, you first need to salt it until it becomes tasty, and only then sweeten it (it’s much more difficult to do this in the reverse order). This porridge will be much tastier than porridge without salt. Almost all sweet dishes become much tastier if they are salted.
The situation is very similar with sugar - it is also a flavor enhancer. Sugar should be added to any dough, even unsweetened ones. But sugar works especially well with vegetables. If you cook vegetables for salad not only in salted but also in sweetened water, they will be much tastier and more aromatic, especially carrots. The same applies to stewed vegetables.
Traditionally, salt and sugar are often used in combination, for example, fish is not salted with salt, but with a mixture of salt and sugar, and marinades are always made with the addition of sugar. But in more prosaic dishes, people often forget to add salt or sugar where they are needed.
Always add a little sugar to at least vegetables and any type of dough. Well, if you make sweet dishes, be sure to always add a pinch of salt to them. Be especially careful with milk porridges - salt works wonders with them, and sweet porridges without salt, in my opinion, are a rare abomination.
From the tongue to the brain: what is taste and why you shouldn’t trust it
If you show a subject a picture of pizza and then give a small electric shock to the tongue, the brain is more happy than after a picture of yogurt. Everyone is happy with a large, high-calorie piece... even if it is painted. What is “taste”, how do we feel it, how does it lie to us, and we ask for more - read in this material.
Why do you need taste?
A long time ago, when people had not yet invented restaurants, they divided tastes into potentially dangerous and not so dangerous. “Bitter” then was a sign of probable poison, “sour” - something unripe or spoiled. But the tastes of sweet or umami - protein-rich food - signaled “fine and rare food, grab it!” This is why modern man often suffers from obesity: the inner primate is not aware that food has long become easily accessible and hunger is not expected, so it demands to grab burgers and candies, and it is incredibly difficult to fight it - after all, it is determined to survive.
Most vertebrates recognize the same tastes as humans. But there are exceptions. “Use it or lose it” is not without reason considered the main principle of evolution: those animals that do not need to sense a certain taste gradually lose this ability. Thus, all cats do not sense sweetness: they have deactivated one of the two genes responsible for the functioning of the corresponding receptor. Presumably the reason is that they are predators. And herbivorous pandas have a disabled perception of umami - they are still unlikely to come across protein-rich bamboo.
Taste also has a dark side: we begin to love previously unpleasant sensations if we are imbued with the idea that the benefits exceed the inconveniences. For example, coffee and alcohol are bitter, but one can wake us up, and the other can cheer us up, and so I resolutely enter the wine department to make myself bitter.By the way, the tendency to drink may also be related to taste, or more precisely, to a genetically inherent sensitivity to bitter things: if you don’t feel sick from the bitterness of alcohol, it’s much easier to become a drunkard.
Does color have taste?
In fact, food is a huge, multifaceted experience. First of all, taste is inseparable from smell - anyone knows this who hasn’t skipped biology classes, suffered at least once with a runny nose, or noticed that on the “brain map” the areas responsible for the perception of taste and smell are located very close. It depends on the temperature: for example, the hotter the cheddar, the more sour it is, and if you drink cold water and immediately start eating, the perception of sweetness is greatly reduced.
The shape of the object can affect the taste. And even a chandelier. David Gahl, in an experiment at Northwestern Illinois University in his major in marketing and consumer behavior, found that after sorting geometric shapes, subjects rated the taste of cheese with sharp edges as stronger and richer than round cheese. Another experiment from the same series showed that people who prefer strong coffee drink more of the drink in a brightly lit room than in a darkened one. But weak coffee lovers do the opposite.
The filiform papillae of the tongue, responsible for touch, the teeth with their pressure sensors at the roots, and the chewing muscles work together to evaluate the texture of food. They are the ones who are able to appreciate molecular cuisine - all these almond cheeses, rum caviar and meat foam. It is believed that people favor solid foods the most. Firstly, their texture changes during chewing, and secondly, they simply stay in the mouth longer.
Does money have taste?
Affect food preferences and stereotypes. It turns out that men more often try to choose stereotypically “masculine” food and tend to get a little stuck when choosing. At the same time, for example, fermented milk products are considered feminine products, and meat products are considered masculine. A goldmine for marketers!
Even the price tag dictates taste. Thus, wine tastes better to a person if he considers it expensive. Moreover, this has been proven subjectively, when the subject evaluates the wine himself, and objectively, using functional MRI: the higher the price tag, the higher the activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex. Even neurons love money!
These are not all nefarious tricks of a brain that just wants to eat. Unfortunately, the area of interdependence of sensory systems has not yet been sufficiently studied. But someday scientists will design the perfect dinner: solid food with a delicious shape, optimal texture, appetizing lighting - and for crazy money, otherwise it won’t be as tasty.
What is language
The tongue consists of so-called taste buds in the shape, oddly enough, of bulbs. Each such formation is from 50 to 100 taste cells of four (as is now believed) types, two of which are intended for recognizing tastes. Thus, the old assertion that different areas of the tongue specialize in different tastes has long been refuted. However, the tongue, strictly speaking, does not know what taste is at all. He perceives it, but does not define it. The brain does this.
It took seven decades to figure out exactly how we taste. Sweet, bitter and umami tastes have been linked to the G-protein family. Salty and sour - with ion channels: for example, sour taste - with the PKD2L1 receptor, which detects a high concentration of hydrogen ions. A separate receptor recognizes soda.
Most people have receptors that are sensitive to bitterness: as already mentioned, bitter is a potential poison, so quickly identifying it and spitting it out immediately can be vital.
How the brain senses taste
The same experts who identified specific taste buds - Charles Zucker and Nicholas Riba - went on to look for how a sensation turns into a concrete fact. It turned out that each taste (well, except for sour, which is still unclear) corresponds to a certain area in the part of the brain responsible for understanding taste.
With some brain damage, a person does not perceive taste, although the taste buds are fine. This is called central ageusia. The opposite is even more interesting: if there are no taste buds on the tongue or there is no tongue itself, will a person feel taste? You can read the corresponding AmA thread on Reddit or turn to the experience of scientists at California State University at Long Beach.
For example For Kelly Rogers, who was born without a tongue, they made sure that she could distinguish all basic tastes. Plus he loves stout!The trick is that taste buds are not only located on the tongue. First of all, this is the digestive tract: they are found, for example, in the throat (it is these receptors that help a tongueless person feel taste), in the trachea and in the stomach. Bitter receptors are found on the so-called cilia of the epithelium of the respiratory tract: they quickly detect bitter compounds like tobacco smoke and try to get rid of it. T1R2/T1R3 sweet receptors are found in the intestine; they are associated with increased insulin production after glucose determination. Their signal bypasses our immediate consciousness, but in theory it can additionally hook a person on sweets and high-calorie foods as a metabolic value. At least, it worked in laboratory mice that were insensitive to sweetness: they didn’t feel the taste, but the reward system in the brain, due to “physiological events that begin in the gastrointestinal tract,” was triggered anyway.
Yes, what the umami receptor does in sperm, and the bitter receptor does in the testicles, is not yet known for certain. But since they are there, they are needed there.
Why spicy foods give you a buzz?
In general, five tastes are now recognized: sweet, bitter, salty, sour and umami, “meaty”. Some researchers add others to them, for example, the taste of water, which is about to be included in the list of basic ones. But Indian curry is not on this list: spicy is not a taste at all. Acute is pain. The alkaloid capsaicin (found in chili peppers, jalapenos) and piperine (black pepper) or allyl isothiocyanate (responsible for the charm of mustard, horseradish, wasabi) act on nociceptors, which are associated with painful stimuli, in particular the sensation of high temperature. Hence this amazing feeling that the hot pepper has set your mouth on fire. The protein that causes this effect is also present on the surface of other nerve cells, which is why we suffer so unbearably if, after throwing a jalapeno into the soup, we foolishly scratch our eyes with the same hand.
Some people’s love of ordering a plate of pain is associated with the so-called affective shift - the same thing that makes us love coffee, vodka, cigarettes and hysterics: generally bad, but the reinforcement is positive, so it’s good.Pain and heat in the mouth activate the “oh my god it hurts” warning system, and the brain responds by releasing endorphin and dopamine to block the pain and triggering euphoria. This is how the experience of eating curry is associated with the experience of “we almost died, and then it was really cool!” I want to order more right away. Essentially the same as runner's high, "runner's euphoria", only chili high: limited risks - and adventures with an obligatory happy ending.
But not everyone likes adventures, even at the dinner table; not everyone is ready to eat even curry. According to the study, people who enjoy spicy foods also exhibit higher sensation cravings and sensitivity to reward—in other words, to risk.
Some agree to endure pain in order to have fun and make a profit, others do not. The former will choose mustard for the wings, the latter - sweet and sour sauce. And while the latter are simply having breakfast, the former are experiencing full-fledged torture of rise and fall, which they mistakenly consider to be taste.
Can robots recognize taste?
Taste is almost impossible to measure objectively - there is not and cannot be any “objective” here. Nevertheless, the development and improvement of an artificial language that could taste like a real one has been going on for several years now.
There already exist both industrial sensors tuned to specific tastes and entire electrical languages. These are not human tongue prostheses: they are not necessary; Partial transplantation of a lost tongue is carried out by cutting out a new one from the patient’s own tissue, and in 2003 a donor tongue was transplanted for the first time.
Artificial languages are a way to both test and evaluate food samples and potentially communicate taste over a distance.
Quality control in agriculture and industry, instant exchange of information, development of new tastes, and at least the ability to remotely taste mangoes in a supermarket (if it is possible to establish the supply of information about taste without implanting electrodes in the brain) - artificial languages will be useful to humanity. True, one day such an electric taster identified a human hand as prosciutto, which caused a flurry of jokes about cannibal robots.
Are there taste simulation technologies?
Experiments with taste have long entertained scientists. Thus, the Vocktail programmable cocktail glass with the bluetooth application of the same name offers to simulate any drink using ordinary water: LED lighting provides the required color, a rim of electrodes that stimulate the tongue - taste, and a device with air compartments and a tiny pump that turns on when a person drinks, provide the appropriate smell.
But still, the most promising experiments from a philistine point of view are working with the tastes themselves. Let's return to the experiment from the beginning of the article, which was conducted by Catherine Ohla at the Monell Chemoreception Research Center. She showed subjects pictures of high-calorie foods - salmon, lamb chops - or low-calorie foods like beans and yogurt. After each picture, a weak electric shock was applied to the subject's tongue. Judging by the EEG of brain activity, the discharge after the demonstration of a high-calorie food caused a stronger and more pleasant sensation in the subjects than the same stimulation after a picture of some melon.
That is, to make a fortune, scientists just need to find a way to give broccoli the taste (and preferably also the look, smell and texture) of pork.Of course, you can work in the opposite direction: after a month on a low-fat diet, subjects become more sensitive to their taste - but this is not for us. No, no, not for us.
Entire corporations are busy “counterfeiting” taste: how to replace sugar, salt, fat so that no one gets angry at the substitution, and also to accustom people to substitutes? The same taste that lies to us whenever it wants, in the case of too harmful products, for some reason does not want to play along. All that remains is to connect the electrodes to the brain, watch how the artificial tongue tastes the synthetic pizza - and try to enjoy it.
Some consider it white death, others remind that without it there is no life. In summer, the issue becomes more acute: with sweat we lose salt, and these losses must be compensated. So to salt or not to salt?
ARGUMENTS FOR
It is necessary
Sodium and chlorine, which make up salt, are of great importance for the functioning of the body. The first is involved in maintaining water and acid-base balance and in the transmission of nerve impulses. With its deficiency, muscle weakness, drowsiness occurs, and coordination deteriorates. Chlorine is needed, among other things, for the production of gastric juice. For those who refuse salt, it is important to get these trace elements from other sources - for example, mineral water.
Too little salt is also bad
Specialists from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (USA) studied the effect of salty foods on the body for six years. The study involved 8,700 people. It was found that constant consumption of low-salt foods increases the risk of death from cardiovascular diseases by 80%.
Supplies iodine
Using iodized salt is the easiest way to compensate for the iodine deficiency that most residents of central Russia have.
We're losing her
Ideally, you need to get 3-6 g of salt per day. Nutritionists call this amount the “winter norm,” and this hints that there is also a summer norm. In the heat and/or during sports, we can lose from 20 to 40 g of salt per day. Therefore, if you lead an active lifestyle, in the summer you can really add more salt to your food or drink isotonic sports drinks that compensate for the loss of minerals. After an intense workout in the heat, you can even drink a glass of 0.3-0.5% solution of table salt.
300 g of salt is contained in the body of an adult
0.5-0.6% is its concentration in our blood
0.1 g - average content in 1 liter of breast milk
ARGUMENTS AGAINST
Causes headaches
Salt retains water in the body, increases the load on the heart and kidneys, increases the risk of hypertension, headaches appear, especially in people sensitive to salt - about 20%. It's easy to determine whether you are at risk. Try going on a low- or no-salt diet for at least a week. If your health has improved dramatically, then you need to strictly limit your salt intake.
Slows down brain function
Research has shown that there is a link between salt intake, a sedentary lifestyle and cognitive impairment. Scientists conducted an experiment and found that people who love salty foods and at the same time lead a sedentary lifestyle, over time, begin to cope worse and worse with tests of intelligence and concentration. True, as soon as they start moving more, brain functions improve dramatically, even if the experimental subjects do not stop adding salt to their food.
Harmful to hearts
On the one hand, scientists from the University of California (USA) believe that the body itself controls the distribution of sodium chloride and there is no need to limit it in salt. But for people with cardiovascular problems, salt can create a lot of problems: swelling, increased blood pressure and subsequent hypertension are inevitable. In this case, you need to replace regular salt with preventative salt, which contains little or virtually no sodium, but a lot of potassium and magnesium, which are necessary for the heart.
Promotes weight gain
Firstly, due to the already mentioned edema. Each extra gram of salt retains about 100 ml of water in the body. And secondly, salt is a natural flavor enhancer. It stimulates the taste buds, causing appetite. As a result, we overeat, weight increases, creating a load on the musculoskeletal system and cardiovascular system.
VERDICT OF “HEALTH”
If you have problems with the heart and blood vessels, it is better to minimize salt intake. For the rest, it is not salt that is bad, but its excess. With the recommended norm of 3-6 g per day, the average Russian eats 10-30 g. Moreover, we get only 15% of this amount from the salt shaker. The rest comes from prepared foods that are salted in factories (up to 75% of the daily value), and from natural vegetables and grains that nature itself seasoned (10%).
The less processed foods, baked goods, and canned goods we eat, the less hidden salt we get and the lower the risk of health problems. And salting food with good salt - for example, sea or Himalayan salt, rich in various minerals - is very useful.
To the question Why salt the water when boiling eggs? given by the author Echo the best answer is I don’t know how it is with chemical reactions, but I advise you to put salt so that the shell does not burst, and not so that the egg can be cleaned better.
Answer from 22 answers[guru]
Hello! Here is a selection of topics with answers to your question: Why salt the water when boiling eggs?
Answer from Alexey Kostenkov[active]
so that the eggs are salty
Answer from Prosphora[guru]
Bullshit. It’s just that someone has lost their mind and is salting everything.
Answer from Eurovision[guru]
Made me laugh. In salt water, the white of an egg that cracks during cooking will not leak out. That's why they add salt and add vinegar.
Answer from `
[guru]
to make the water boil faster :))
Answer from Diana.86[guru]
no need to salt the water! ! it is nonsense! Just think about it, the shell is very strong and does not allow salt to pass through
Answer from SAN[expert]
to prevent eggs from bursting
Answer from Marina[guru]
And where did you learn to read and write?
Answer from Irina Vedeneeva(Burlutskaya)[guru]
salt the water so that the egg does not burst, and if the egg bursts, it does not leak out.
Answer from Victor[guru]
Yes, whatever doesn’t burst!
Answer from Џ Rich[guru]
So that the water boils faster and so that the shell comes off easily... and then you need to add more cold water
Answer from Elena[active]
To prevent it from bursting, you just need to add a lot of salt.
Answer from Maglia Ivanova[guru]
If you boil eggs in highly salted water, the contents will not leak out if the egg bursts
Answer from Juicy Fruit[guru]
The water is salted so that the eggs do not burst during cooking. Although in my opinion this is pure nonsense. You need to put the eggs in cold water and only then let them cook. They must warm up evenly, then they will not burst.
Answer from Good for you[guru]
This is the first time I’ve heard about salt at all.... and as for cold water after cooking, I conducted an experiment, some were poured over others not, and so from one batch they cleaned equally well, and sometimes you get such eggs that at least Fill it at least, you'll clean half an egg....
Answer from Nafanya[guru]
the shell is easier to clean
Answer from Irina[newbie]
if the shell bursts so that the contents do not leak out))
Answer from Microsoft internet explorer[newbie]
to prevent it from bursting due to high temperature
Answer from Katya Eremina[newbie]
When adding salt to water for boiling eggs we;
1. We increase the density of the water and the eggs float during cooking and are less likely to hit the bottom
2. We increase the thermal conductivity of the water and the eggs cook faster and more evenly, and the boiling occurs less violently and the eggs, again, break less.
3.Salt promotes rapid coagulation of the protein and even if the egg cracks, the stopper from the protein will not allow it to leak out completely.