• Question: Why do you think we have evolved to like the taste of salt? Why don't we find other minerals equally tasty?

    Asked by eigenvector to Arttu, Ceri, James_M, Monica, Philip on 15 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Philip Dolan

      Philip Dolan answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I’d imagine we evolved a taste for salt because our bodies require it to function and ages ago (waaaaay before we all had salt cellars on our tables) and it was pretty scarce, so it made sense to like the taste of salt. It’s not just sodium chloride that tastes salty to us though – potassium chloride, and I think several other similar ionic solids taste salty.

    • Photo: James M Monk

      James M Monk answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Clearly Philip is correct that we need salt, and our bodies will desire it for that reason, but I think it would be quite hard as a carnivore to not get enough salt.

      I think part of the explanation is that salt is cheap and it is easy to make cheap bland food taste of something by adding more salt. In cooking meat, adding salt can help to crisp it up by absorbing water (for example pork crackling), so we may associate the taste of salt with nice fatty meat, too.

      So in addition to the evolutionary need, there could very well be cultural conditioning to liking salt.

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