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>.
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