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Why does processed food have so much sodium?

Minoosh

Penultimate Amazing
Minoosh
Joined
Jul 15, 2011
Messages
12,761
I can eat a tomato with a sprinkling of salt and it tastes good. But if I buy canned tomato juice, one small glass is going to give me something like 30 percent of the day's sodium requirement. And it doesn't even taste salty. If I get the lower sodium kind - it tastes like it needs salt.

I'm not talking about salt used to preserve, say, beef jerky. The high sodium content is true of just about all canned foods - which I thought were sterilized in the canning process - and I'm noticing it in frozen foods as well. A 220-calorie Lean Cuisine gives me a quarter of the day's sodium (with a good chance I'll salt it lightly as well).

Is the sodium coming from somewhere besides sodium chloride?
 
I think salt is still a preservative even if the food is canned or frozen. Not sure though.

Probably more to do with taste though, which is why there is so much HFCS in everything processed that we buy.
 
Yep. It's both. It's the oldest and most common preservative in the book and we love salty stuff and companies aren't stupid, they know that and (surprise) want to sell as much as they can.
 
lobosrul said:
Probably more to do with taste though, which is why there is so much HFCS in everything processed that we buy.
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I never understood that, either. Ice tea tastes sweet to me with 2 spoonfuls of sugar, but a can of Coke has the equivalent of 16 teaspoons. That should make me gag, but it doesn't (although I've been drinking diet drinks so long I prefer the taste).

I thought the HFCS thing had something to do with a surplus of corn.

ETA: I've managed to create a duplicate thread. Apologies, I don't know how to fix it.
 
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Minoosh said:
I never understood that, either. Ice tea tastes sweet to me with 2 spoonfuls of sugar, but a can of Coke has the equivalent of 16 teaspoons. That should make me gag, but it doesn't (although I've been drinking diet drinks so long I prefer the taste).

I thought the HFCS thing had something to do with a surplus of corn.

ETA: I've managed to create a duplicate thread. Apologies, I don't know how to fix it.
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I can hardly stand to drink regular soda anymore, it just makes me thirsier. Diet tastes plenty sweet to me.

HFCS is used instead of cane sugar because it is cheaper. Its added in huge quantities to lots of food because people have become addicted to sugar, and businesses are just giving people what they want. I noticed years ago that even pizza sauce used in major chains has become sweet.
 
lobosrul said:
I noticed years ago that even pizza sauce used in major chains has become sweet.
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So are the cheaper spaghetti sauces. ugh.

The sugar addiction is weird to me, but again that's just me. Too much not only doesn't taste good but I feel like #### as well. I don't even drink soda any more and rarely eat candy/etc. Occasionally some dark chocolate or a dessert like ice cream, about it.
 
There are "no salt added" canned tomatos, I guess the salt is to make it tastier and sell better? I buy the low sodium stuff most of the time.

Ranb
 
I'd say taste. I work in a food chemistry lab. I'll ask my spies in the minerals department tomorrow.
 
Minoosh said:
I never understood that, either. Ice tea tastes sweet to me with 2 spoonfuls of sugar, but a can of Coke has the equivalent of 16 teaspoons. That should make me gag, but it doesn't (although I've been drinking diet drinks so long I prefer the taste).

I thought the HFCS thing had something to do with a surplus of corn.

ETA: I've managed to create a duplicate thread. Apologies, I don't know how to fix it.
Click to expand...
Try this: take a glass of water, and add sugar. More. Do it until it gets way too sweet, bordering on making you gag territory. Take a sip. Swish it around. Remember it.

Now, add some salt. Trust me. Just a pinch. Taste it. Add some more, and taste again.

What you'll find is the sweetness will be dialed back a bit, replaced with a richer taste, before the drink eventually begins to be noticeably salty. That richer taste is what soda companies aim for.
 
Minoosh said:
A 220-calorie Lean Cuisine gives me a quarter of the day's sodium (with a good chance I'll salt it lightly as well).
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I can't even eat Lean Cuisine, it tastes so salty to me. Same with commercial, bottled spaghetti sauce - it's too sweet. I make my own at home or I use red-wine vinegar, butter, and spices on my pasta. I think it has to do with what you get used to, perhaps.
 
fuelair said:
Salt Goooood!!!
Sweeeeeet Gooooooood!!!
(End Frankenstein's creation mode/)
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Some truth to that - evolutionarily it's probably no surprise we value salt, grease and carbs.

Beelzebuddy said:
Try this: take a glass of water, and add sugar. More. Do it until it gets way too sweet, bordering on making you gag territory. Take a sip. Swish it around. Remember it.

Now, add some salt. Trust me. Just a pinch. Taste it. Add some more, and taste again.

What you'll find is the sweetness will be dialed back a bit, replaced with a richer taste, before the drink eventually begins to be noticeably salty. That richer taste is what soda companies aim for.
Click to expand...

Believe it or not … I have no sugar in the house. Not much salt either. I have also read that "New Coke" did well in taste tests, but not so much when people drank a whole can.

Tiktaalik said:
Same with commercial, bottled spaghetti sauce - it's too sweet.
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Even the crust is sweet at my nearest franchise joint.

Tiktaalik said:
I think it has to do with what you get used to, perhaps.
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I have read about "background" levels of salt - that if you're used to a lot, it takes incrementally more to achieve the sensation of "saltiness." But can some blood be saltier than others? I always thought this would balance out with adequate consumption of water, and I drink a fair amount.
 
Minoosh said:
Is the sodium coming from somewhere besides sodium chloride?
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Salt is a preservative. In general, the less well-preserved a food is, the more salt it has. Canned goods have more salt than tetrapak. Tetrapak has more salt than flash-frozen.

Salt is also a flavor enhancer. The farther the food is from the farm, the more salt.

Low sodium tomato juice has 140 mg per 8 oz. glass. No salt added tetrapak diced tomatoes have 10 mg. Campbell's tomato bisque (canned and highly processed) has 880 mg.
 
My uneducated guess is that people found that adding salt made people's mouths water and that makes us feel like we're enjoying the food more. We may have evolved to like it. /dumb guess
 
Tiktaalik said:
I can't even eat Lean Cuisine, it tastes so salty to me. Same with commercial, bottled spaghetti sauce - it's too sweet. I make my own at home or I use red-wine vinegar, butter, and spices on my pasta. I think it has to do with what you get used to, perhaps.
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Spaghetti with butter and garlic................................... It is recommended by the no longer with us unfortunately Mary F.K. Fisher!!!!!!! She recommends real good!!!!!
 
Side note, as I become more concerned/conscious about cutting back on salt, I have been surprised at some of my findings....like:

- typically pretzels have WAY more salt than most other salty snacks (chips etc), and I don't just mean the big pretzels with chunks of salt the size of golf balls on them.
- one Tbs of soy sauce has about 2/3 of your entire RDA.
- one hot dog (the worst offenders) nearly half. Even the best of them for the most part are around 1/3 (that's just one mind you).
- many "processed" (frozen, pre-made) meals, 2/3 or more, and those are the smaller ones.

Yikes.
 
fuelair said:
Spaghetti with butter and garlic................................... It is recommended by the no longer with us unfortunately Mary F.K. Fisher!!!!!!! She recommends real good!!!!!
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Funny. the only MFK Fisher I've ever read is a non-food book ("Among Friends")! But we appear to agree...
 
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In addition to acting as a preservative (which most of these products probably don't need - they often also contain sodium benzoate or potassium sorbate which do the job quite well) the salt improves the flavor. For something like canned or bottled tomato juice, the canning process wrecks the flavor of the juice, so lots of salt is added to try to bring it back to life. They also add citric acid to the juice for similar reasons.

Both salt and acid work to brighten the flavor of whatever you're eating. In the case of packaged foods, this is stuff that has sat around for months on a shelf, so it needs a fair amount of 'brightening.'

Another factor is that seasoning early in the cooking process requires more salt than seasoning later in the cooking process in order to achieve the same sensation of saltiness. (It has something to do with sodium ions associating with larger molecules and being bound to them rather than sticking to our taste buds.) I have to think that sitting on a shelf for months would be equivalent to adding a bunch of salt at the beginning of cooking.

Here's an interesting interview about salt in cooking from The Splendid Table.
 
fuelair said:
Spaghetti with butter and garlic................................... It is recommended by the no longer with us unfortunately Mary F.K. Fisher!!!!!!! She recommends real good!!!!!
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Sounds good - would that be salted butter or unsalted?

My former-in-laws always had both gezalsen butter and suse butter (with an umlaut and a letter I can't make, but pronounced zewsa butter). They had different tastes.
 
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