Blog Post 5: Connecting the Dots

Now that we finished making three different batches of brownies: one salty, one sweet, and one highly processed from a box mix, I decided to go back to my original research and also read more articles to gain a better understanding of our observations. My first blog post summarized a scientific journal about food addictions, explaining why sugar in particular appeals to human taste buds and may become extremely addicting. Keeping in mind my research about how sugars and fats affect our brains, I then made a batch of peanut butter brownies in my second blog post. Looking back, I suddenly realized that I never did any specific research about how salt would affect the brain. My brownie batches with extra sugar/fat and processed from a box mix both made sense because of the journal “Physical Craving and Food Addiction,” which explained how the brain treated sugary and fatty foods mimicked a dopamine and even addictive effect on the brain. Yet at the conclusion of my brownie baking project, one question still remains: Why does salt matter?

Rather than looking at a single scientific journal entry, I decided to research the importance of salt by looking at multiple articles to hear from a different perspective. My first article came from a scientific blog, titled Science Fare. According to Kevin Liu, we evolved to enjoy the taste of salt as a survival instinct because our bodies require us to maintain a specific salt balance in order to keep healthy. Additionally, salt has the ability to suppress bitter tastes. Sugar acts in a similar way in that it allows bitter foods to taste tolerable.

To hear from a completely different perspective, I also looked at a cooking website for a chef’s explanation about the effects of salt on our brain. In Culinate, Helen Rennie’s blog post “Grain Of Salt -- Sodium makes food taste better” explains how salt is crucial in making food taste good. Depending on the type of food, whether it is a meat, vegetable, or etc. salt must be added either before or after preparing the dish in order to enhance flavouring.

For my next source, I found a government book from the National Library of Medicine, titled “Taste and Flavor Roles of Sodium in Foods.” This article focused more on the physical effects of salt on humans rather than the evolutionary reasonings behind the effects. On a chemical level, sodium chloride gives a purely salty flavour that increases with concentration. One aspect of salt that humans particularly enjoy is the the salt flavour has a sudden spike, or peak, before falling. Like the previous article mentioned, salt suppresses bitterness. As a result, this may also enhance some flavours, such as sugary tastes. I found this fact interesting and unexpected because normally people would imagine sugar and salt as opposite tastes. Perhaps this explains why the brownie batch made from the box mixture turned out so successful. Too much salt, such as the first batch with lots of peanut butter, tasted overwhelmingly savoury to those who preferred sweets. On the other hand, too much sugar and fat, like the second batch of brownies, tasted overwhelmingly sweet for those who needed some salt to compensate the flavour. The brownie box mixture had a combination of salt and sugar, which appealed to both because the salt actually enhanced the sweet taste in the brownies.

Remembering my initial research about how sugar appears as addictive as drugs in that it creates a dopamine effect in the brain, one article about salt that caught my eye. The Science Daily featured the article, “Salt appetite is linked to drug addiction, research finds.” According the Duke University Medical Center, having an immediate sense of gratification after intaking salt makes sense from an evolutionary perspective because this would help animals quickly get away from predators. Yet this survival behavior that causes the brain to produce dopamine and receive instant gratitude after consuming salt may become addicting. As these dopamine pathways cause drug, and even sugar, addictions and cravings, salt may also fall into this category of dangerously addictive chemicals. After reading this article, I found it interesting how similar it sounded to the explanations about how sugar affects the brain.

Daily Mail, a health website in the United Kingdom, elaborated more about Duke University’s study in the article “Why salt is addictive: It stimulates the brain cells just like cigarettes and hard drugs do.” In the study, three groups of mice were fed normal, low, and high sodium diets. When comparing the mice brains, they noticed the brains made proteins linked to heroin, cocaine, and nicotine. Interestingly, the spike generated by salt is also extremely short lived, lasting less than the amount of time it takes for the salt to pass through the gut. As a result, salt cravings appear similar on a neurological level to opiate addictions.

Overall, it seems that salt has equal effects on the brain as sugar and fat. Therefore it makes sense that junk food and fast foods become so addicting, which would also contribute to America’s obesity problems. Furthermore, if sugar, fat, and salt itself release spikes of dopamine, homemade junk food is no better than highly processed factory-made junk food in terms of addiction..

Works Cited

Fiona Macrae for the Daily Mail. "Why Salt Is Addictive: It Stimulates the Brain Cells Just like Cigarettes and Hard Drugs." Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, n.d. Web. 08 Mar. 2015. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2013703/Why-salt-addictive-It-stimulates-brain-cells-just-like-cigarettes-hard-drugs.html>.

Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Strategies to Reduce Sodium Intake; Henney JE, Taylor CL, Boon CS, editors. Strategies to Reduce Sodium Intake in the United States. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2010. 3, Taste and Flavor Roles of Sodium in Foods: A Unique Challenge to Reducing Sodium Intake. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK50958/

Liu, Kevin. "Why Does Salt Make (almost) Everything Taste Better?" Science Fare. N.p., 10 July 2013. Web. 08 Mar. 2015. <http://sciencefare.org/2013/07/10/why-does-salt-make-almost-everything-taste-better/>.

Rennie, Helen. "Grain of Salt -- Sodium Makes Food Taste Better." Grain of Salt — Sodium Makes Food Taste Better. N.p., 1 June 2007. Web. 09 Mar. 2015. <http://www.culinate.com/columns/front_burner/salt_seasoning>.

"Salt Appetite Is Linked to Drug Addiction, Research Finds." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, n.d. Web. 08 Mar. 2015. <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110711151451.htm>.

Blog Post 4: Taking Shortcuts

So far, I have baked peanut butter brownies and extremely sugary/buttery brownies from scratch. My original peanut butter brownie batch appealed primarily to myself and my friends, who prefered salty foods. On the other hand, my sweet-toothed floormates preferred my second batch of brownies, in which I simply removed the peanut butter from the original recipe and significantly increased the sugar and butter.

For my third brownie trial, I wondered which category of taste a standard, pre made brownie mix at Safeway would fall into: sweet or savoury? Scanning the various types of brownie mixes on the shelf, I finally settled on the Double Chocolate Ghirardelli Brownie Mix. I avoided any organic brownie mixes and simply based my selection on the product’s advertisement pictures in order to find a highly processed brownie mix for comparison with my brownies from scratch. Examining brownie mix, decorated with the gold Ghirardelli chocolate bar design at the top and a delicious, freshly baked brownie square beneath the logo.

I pulled the mix off the shelf, flipped the box, and read the ingredients: Sugar, enriched bleached flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), chocolate chips (sugar, chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, soy lecithin [emulsifier], vanilla), canola or soybean oil, natural cocoa, cocoa (processed with alkali), wheat starch, salt, artificial flavor, sodium bicarbonate. “How funny!” I said to my friend, pointing at the box. “You would predict chocolate or cocoa as the first ingredient of premium double chocolate brownies, yet actually it’s just sugar.”

Walking back to the Graham lounge kitchen, I wondered if these brownies would turn out sweeter or saltier. Although the first ingredient was sugar, it also contained salt and sodium bicarbonate, which should add a salty flavour, like the peanut butter did in batch one. We placed the box of brownie mix on the counter, and read the instructions on the back. Unlike the brownies from scratch we had made in the past weeks, this “recipe” only had three steps: (1) Preheat oven; (2) mix together water, oil, and eggs with the brownie mix; (3) bake.

Whereas both brownie batches made from scratch took about 45 minutes of preparation time, the box mix recipe only took us about 10 minutes. Though my learning curve in cooking contributed to some of the preparation time saved (and also the smoothness and simplicity of the recipe), we all agreed that having a pre made box mix gave us an enormous shortcut. I guess I grew accustomed to baking from scratch, because I felt slightly disappointed when putting the brownie tray in the oven. I felt like a cheater, and told my friend “That’s it? Are you sure we aren’t skipping any steps?”

Ding! My friend’s phone timer rang, and we excitedly opened the oven door. The crispy golden brown top of the brownie looked shockingly similar to the advertisement photograph. I poked a fork through the crisp outer shell and into the soft cake part of the brownie. It came out clean, so we carefully transferred the brownie tray onto the stovetop to cool. “Brownies are ready!” I called out to my floormates again, knocking on their doors as I jogged down the hall.

Once the brownies cooled, I carefully cut it into neat little squares, about a fourth of the serving piece in the advertisement picture on the box. Handing each of my friends and floormates a slice, we tried predicting whether these brownies would be sweet or savoury. Excluding two of my friends who adamantly argued the brownies would be as salty as the peanut butter batch (despite the fact that Double Chocolate Ghirardelli Brownies has absolutely no peanut butter inside), everyone including myself believed the brownies would taste as sweet as the super sugary and buttery brownies we had made for batch two.

“Three, two, one…” I bit into my steaming soft brownie square and slowly chewed, letting the chocolate melt on my tongue. Though it did not taste quite as salty as the peanut butter brownies that I loved, it also tasted less overwhelmingly sweet as batch two. My friends who shared my taste agreed, saying that they rated peanut butter brownies as the best, this shortcut batch of brownies as second best, and the extra sugar and butter batch as third. My floormates, most of whom had a sweet tooth, rated our different brownie batches in the exactly opposite order: super sugary and buttery brownies tasted best, the box mix tasted second best, and the peanut butter ones worst of the three.

After thinking about it, I considered the Double Chocolate Ghirardelli Brownie Mix company quite smart. By making their brownies both sweet and savoury, this enabled their product to appeal to both their sweet-toothed customers and also their salt-loving customers.