Wednesday, June 30, 2010
By Sylvia Rector
Detroit Free Press
If you watch food TV, you soon realize that when chefs talk about seasoning a dish, they’re seldom talking about herbs and spices.
They’re talking about salt. Perhaps pepper, too — but always salt.
It’s the elemental seasoning for savory foods and often a necessary ingredient in sweets.
Yet, as basic as it is, salt trips up contestants on “Top Chef” and its celebrity spinoff, “Top Chef Masters,” in virtually every show. And when it happens, it’s usually a fatal error.
It happened twice on a recent “Masters.”
Cambridge chef Jody Adams acknowledged her braised chicken dish was over-salted because she reused some roasting juices in her broth.
But Chicago chef Rick Tramonto stood his ground when judge Jay Rayner asked him if he thought his dish of white beans and sausage was too salty.
Tramonto, who seemed personally offended, stared back at Rayner and said, “No.”
Seasoning food correctly is fundamental to good cooking and no one, especially a highly skilled chef, takes kindly to being second-guessed on it.
But with the National Salt Reduction Initiative, chefs and food companies across the nation are being asked to reduce the amount of sodium in their food by 25 percent over the next five years. The sodium in salt is a major contributor to high blood pressure, which in turn contributes to heart attacks and stroke, the leading cause of preventable deaths in America, according to medical and public health officials.
The recommended sodium limit is 1,500-2,300 milligrams per day for adults, but most of us consume twice that much — not because we add it at the table, but because about 80 percent of it is in food when we buy it, which is why processed and restaurant foods are under scrutiny.
Recently, the salt-reduction effort — a public-private partnership directed by the administration of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg — announced a significant development: Sixteen companies have agreed to meet sodium-reduction goals for 49 packaged-food categories and 25 categories of restaurant food by 2014 or sooner.
Four are restaurant chains: Au Bon Pain, Starbucks, Subway and Uno Chicago Grill. The others are Boar’s Head, FreshDirect, Goya, Hain Celestial, Heinz, Kraft, LiDestri, Mars, McCain Foods, Red Gold, Unilever and White Rose food companies.
The targeted food categories include everything from bacon, hot dogs, cheeses and soups to rice mixes, frozen pizzas, snacks and condiments. In restaurants, food items range from sandwiches, burgers and fries to soups, pizza and bread.
If every food company and restaurant chain joined in the sodium-reduction effort, it could make a difference in health — although there’s evidence that other factors besides salt play a role in our high-blood-pressure epidemic.
Even so, I hope more food companies step up to change their products — because if the voluntary effort doesn’t work, government regulators are likely to set mandatory limits.
And I, for one, do not look forward to the Michael Bloombergs of the world telling the Rick Tramontos how their food should taste.
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