Salt in Restaurant Food

[Amethyst]

We were seeing a steady rise in BP despite lots of exercise/healthy weight. Our Dr. did not recommend BP medicine (yet). I decided to try reducing salt in our diets. I didn't go the "stealth" route, but announced that we would be switching from table salt to kosher salt (tastes saltier) and I would no longer put salt in baked goods. If anyone noticed/disliked the difference, we would go back to the old ways.

Well, everyone was fine with the new less-salt (Not "no-salt") regime; we've been doing it for months. This weekend, we had dinner at a Ruth's Chris and OMG, the food tasted so salty! The appetizer and entrees were loaded with salt. I'd been looking forward to a great meal, and it certainly cost enough $$, but I have to say it just did not taste good to me.

Has this happened to anyone else? I hate to think that restaurant meals are ruined forever.

 

[bUU]

It's a quandary. Even though we, who have cut down on salt in the food we cook for ourselves, taste salt more profoundly, we still view lightly seasoned restaurant meals as somehow not as good as they should be, so asking a chef to go light on the salt is like asking the chef to set him or herself up for failure.

 

[Another Reader]

I don't eat at restaurants very often. The salt and other flavor enhancers are unacceptable. A number of chains are actually microwaving frozen entrees produced in factories, not on site. If you want to eat good food made from quality ingredients, make it yourself at home.

Here's a restaurant with the ultimate contempt for food quality and the customer.

Yelper exposes Long Beach brunch spot for serving Popeyes chicken - SFGate

No salt on the table here. None added in cooking unless necessary for yeast dough to rise (minimal).

Edited to add: I suggest hanging out at different restaurants early in the morning. You will see Sysco trucks delivering the same ingredients and partially prepared foods to almost all of them.

 

[kyzymurgist]

One of the many reasons we rarely eat out. Why oversalt during cooking when it's so easy to add salt to taste at the table Infuriating.

 

[mystang52]

I generally don't like salty foods anyway. At restaurants we usually frequent, I will ask for no seasoning on the dishes I am familiar with. But I often forget; I recently had a turkey burger at a local restaurant. It tasted fine. But, wow, later that evening I was incredibly thirsty.
I don't know how much salt was in that burger, but I'd call it "stealth salt." So, one must be constantly diligent to ask for no additional seasoning.

 

[razztazz]

We were seeing a steady rise in BP despite lots of exercise/healthy weight. Our Dr. did not recommend BP medicine (yet). I decided to try reducing salt in our diets. I didn't go the "stealth" route, but announced that we would be switching from table salt to kosher salt (tastes saltier) and I would no longer put salt in baked goods. If anyone noticed/disliked the difference, we would go back to the old ways.

Well, everyone was fine with the new less-salt (Not "no-salt") regime; we've been doing it for months. This weekend, we had dinner at a Ruth's Chris and OMG, the food tasted so salty! The appetizer and entrees were loaded with salt. I'd been looking forward to a great meal, and it certainly cost enough $$, but I have to say it just did not taste good to me.

Has this happened to anyone else? I hate to think that restaurant meals are ruined forever.

Mario Batali has stated many many times on TV in various interviews and cooking situations that the reason most people say when they try to take a dish at home it doesn't taste as good as it did at the restaurant is because people don't use enough salt at home. Restaurant chefs dump salt in everything

 

[braumeister]

I hate to tell you this, but I think it's more a function of, ahem, maturing.

I rarely eat restaurant meals, and the biggest reason is because I find them way too salty.

I eat practically no prepared foods (boxed/canned things in the supermarket).

I prepare our own fresh food myself at home and use hardly any salt.

Yet with all that, my blood pressure has gradually crept up over the years to the point that I started medication for it a couple of months ago.

So i would say the restaurants are only partly to blame. Time is the other culprit.

 

[Amethyst]

Yes, I know the bp rise is due to aging. I only mention bp as background. OR were you trying to say that we taste salt more as we age?

I hate to tell you this, but I think it's more a function of, ahem, maturing.

I rarely eat restaurant meals, and the biggest reason is because I find them way too salty.

I eat practically no prepared foods (boxed/canned things in the supermarket).

I prepare our own fresh food myself at home and use hardly any salt.

Yet with all that, my blood pressure has gradually crept up over the years to the point that I started medication for it a couple of months ago.

So i would say the restaurants are only partly to blame. Time is the other culprit.

 

[MRG]

Has this happened to anyone else? I hate to think that restaurant meals are ruined forever.

Yes! In 1992 when I was a little younger. It gets better with time.

Some people today don't believe hypertension and sodium are linked. I'm not smart enough to debate that.

I do choose to limit my sodium. I seldom cook with it, only add it to certain foods after preparation. I'll ask restaurants if lower sodium options are available. I'd expect higher end restaurants to provide that option(at least I'd tell them that).

I frequently review restaurants in this small town. A restaurant that did season all food to perfection, has recently stopped that practice and put salt and pepper back on the table.

 

[Clone]

Yes, I know the bp rise is due to aging. I only mention bp as background. OR were you trying to say that we taste salt more as we age?

I believe that I taste salt a lot more than I did a few years ago. I notice it especially on popcorn and french fries. Most of the fried chicken places use so much salt that I can't eat that anymore.

A quick search indicated that as you age you can lose your sensitivity for tasting spices. Perhaps my preference for less salt comes from more home cooking and less prepared foods?

 

[RobbieB]

I love restaurant food and don't find it too salty at all.

 

[Ready]

We like going to the local Pei Wei for an occasional Chinese meal indulgence, but lately I've been reading the nutritional information on each menu item before ordering, and it's getting very difficult to find a dish that is reasonably low in salt and sugar.

They just recently added a Japanese Chile Ramen dish to their menu which looks great on the monitor photo, but it has 7,030 mg of sodium. I laugh when I think of trying to eat there and keep total sodium intake to 2,000 mg daily. Not even remotely possible.

You can try switching to dishes that are more sweet than salty, like their Honey Seared Shrimp. Now you get "only" 1950 mg of sodium, but 110 grams of sugar. As a comparison, a double scoop of vanilla ice cream has about 28 grams of sugar. So the honey seared shrimp has about as much sugar as eight scoops of ice cream. Pretty ridiculous.

 

[ziggy29]

I personally have never felt a link between sodium and BP. Maybe some folks do, and maybe there is a genetic link to it.

My family does have a history of hypertension, and my BP has been steady for about 20 years on the high end of normal -- usually around 130/85 or some such, give or take a little. It's never enough that my doc wants to put me on meds, but every year it's "let's keep an eye on it, and as long as it doesn't go higher, we're OK". (It probably helps that my HDL, the "good" cholesterol, is almost off the charts, usually in the 80-90 range.)

I've tried cutting down on salt -- a lot. I've also gone through times where I've not monitored sodium intake at all. I've tried (usually) to find a middle ground in the sense of "all things in moderation". Nothing seems to change my BP, not consistently or over a series of repeated measurements. I've probably had diets anywhere from 1,000 mg to 5,000 mg of sodium a day. Can't tell any difference in BP.

That said I still don't want to overdo it.... but I do see medical evidence that it doesn't affect everyone the same way.

 

[pj.mask]

Studies have shown that some people are impacted by sodium and others are insensitive to the impact on blood pressure. We eat out selectively and usually in the foodie scene. We cook and eat at places that are usually quite healthy. I do find a lot of places are high sodium - lots of obeast people like it. I like to taste the vegetables or meat, not the seasoning.

 

[Sunset]

I do most of the cooking, and I don't add salt to our meals when cooking, as there is already salt in all sorts of things, (can of beans, can of tomatoes, ketchup, soya sauce, etc). So I'm sure we get plenty.

The one downside is we are not getting the iodine that is added to table salt.

We do notice at restaurants the food can be salty, sometimes super salty.
I have seen people add salt to their salted fries !!
So I'm sure we are more sensitive to the taste of salt than those folks !

 

[Meadbh]

I too have noticed that, since I cook a lot more at home, restaurant food tastes more salty. I follow a number of cooking vlogs and, while these professional home cooks season with salt, they use it sparingly, especially if there are other salty ingredients, such as Parmesan cheese, fish sauce, etc. I have learnt that seasoning each component of a dish during cooking is more effective than waiting till it reaches the table. I have tried to cook entirely without salt, but the results taste like cardboard, leading to the addition of more salt to make them palatable.

Tangentially, I have begun using Stevia to replace granulated sugar in baking. It works very well.

 

[bUU]

Why [salt] during cooking when it's so easy to add salt to taste at the table Infuriating.

Because it makes a difference diners can taste.

 

[Midpack]

Even though we, who have cut down on salt in the food we cook for ourselves, taste salt more profoundly, we still view lightly seasoned restaurant meals as somehow not as good as they should be, so asking a chef to go light on the salt is like asking the chef to set him or herself up for failure.

Mario Batali has stated many many times on TV in various interviews and cooking situations that the reason most people say when they try to take a dish at home it doesn't taste as good as it did at the restaurant is because people don't use enough salt at home. Restaurant chefs dump salt in everything

I love restaurant food and don't find it too salty at all.

Right or wrong, “we” have all learned to expect restaurant food to have a lot of salt in it. It doesn’t ‘taste salty’ in most if any restaurants we go to.

If you watch Food Network or other cooking shows, you may be very surprised to see how much salt they all use, even most truly great chefs.

While healthy, cutting back significantly on salt is an acquired taste in the West at least. Haven’t we all been to cafeterias that old folks most often frequent and thought everything tasted really bland - for lack of salt? I know we have...

 

[Elbata]

We were seeing a steady rise in BP despite lots of exercise/healthy weight. Our Dr. did not recommend BP medicine (yet). I decided to try reducing salt in our diets. I didn't go the "stealth" route, but announced that we would be switching from table salt to kosher salt (tastes saltier) and I would no longer put salt in baked goods. If anyone noticed/disliked the difference, we would go back to the old ways.

Well, everyone was fine with the new less-salt (Not "no-salt") regime; we've been doing it for months. This weekend, we had dinner at a Ruth's Chris and OMG, the food tasted so salty! The appetizer and entrees were loaded with salt. I'd been looking forward to a great meal, and it certainly cost enough $$, but I have to say it just did not taste good to me.

Has this happened to anyone else? I hate to think that restaurant meals are ruined forever.

Sadly, this is the rule for restaurants. They are certainly not in business for your health. This is an obvious statement, but you would think that food, being your most intimate relationship with nature, that health would be a concern. But it's absolutely not. It's the profit motive.

Read "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us". These large multi-nationals willingly admit that scientists are on the payroll to make their food as addictive as possible with the right amount of sugar, salt and fat.

Here is an article by Dr Greger on the Yanomamo people. A recently discovered tribe around the Venezuelan/Brazilian border, consisting of ~35,000 people. Not one has HBP:

https://nutritionfacts.org/2017/10/05/choosing-to-have-a-normal-blood-pressure/

 

[Midpack]

Sadly, this is the rule for restaurants. They are certainly not in business for your health. This is an obvious statement, but you would think that food, being your most intimate relationship with nature, that health would be a concern. But it's absolutely not. It's the profit motive.

While profit is certainly the motive, I’m not as cynical about why. Restaurants give patrons what most patrons ultimately demand through actual ordering, and for most that’s what tastes good, not what’s best for their health. Restaurants offer what actually sells period.

In addition to fewer healthy options, we’re appalled at the huge portion sizes in many restaurants these days, but that too is because more people judge restaurants primarily by where can I get the most food for the lowest relative cost. Folks looking for healthy food are in the minority, and many of them don’t frequent restaurants as often as others - Catch-22?

Who hasn’t seen restaurants from fast food and up the food chain put and even promote healthier options on their menus, only to see them pulled months/years later? They pull them because very few people order them, why else? It seems many restaurants now post calories if not other nutritional info that ought to make more people think twice, but evidently only a few do. How many times have you watched someone (skip the grilled chicken and) order e.g. a double bacon cheeseburger with supersize fries - and a Diet Coke?

I’ll guarantee you that if more people demanded healthier food with actual orders (vs what many say) - restaurants would quickly comply. ‘We get what we (collectively) deserve.’

 

[Elbata]

While profit is certainly the motive, I’m not as cynical about why. Restaurants give patrons what most patrons ultimately demand through actual ordering, and for most that’s what tastes good, not what’s best for their health. We’re appalled at the huge portion sizes in many restaurants these days, but that too is because more people judge restaurants by quantity of food/dollar than not.

Who hasn’t seen restaurants from fast food and up the food chain put and even promote healthier options on their menus, only to see them pulled months/years later? They pull them because very few people order them, why else? I’ll guarantee you that if more people demanded healthier food with actual orders (vs what many say) - restaurants would gladly comply.

Absolutely agree. When I go to a restaurant with my wife, and I order a veggie burger, I'd bet that patty has been in their freezer for over a year. I could be wrong, but I think veggie burgers are not a hot ticket item flying off the shelves at Burger King.

Restaurants are in the business to sell us food that makes us fat. Fat cooks, creating fat food, served by fat waitresses, to fat customers.

 

[CDRE]

The highly ranked and reputable D.A.S.H diet indicates a direct correlation of sodium and blood pressure.
"The DASH diet and the control diet at the lower salt levels were both successful in lowering blood pressure, but the largest reductions in blood pressure were obtained by eating a combination of these two (i.e., a lower-salt version of the DASH diet). The effect of this combination at a sodium level of 1,500 mg/day was an average blood pressure reduction of 8.9/4.5 mm Hg (systolic/diastolic). The hypertensive subjects experienced an average reduction of 11.5/5.7 mm Hg.[10] The DASH-sodium results indicate that low sodium levels correlated with the largest reductions in blood pressure for participants at both pre-hypertensive and hypertensive levels, with the hypertensive participants showing the greatest reductions in blood pressure overall." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DASH_diet

 

[bUU]

Restaurants are in the business to sell us food that makes us fat.

Except that's not true. As was pointed out above, restaurants are in the business to make profit. How best to make profit is a matter of understanding consumer behaviors. Consumers not only reward restaurants that offer properly seasoned dishes made with liberal amounts of oil and butter, but they punish restaurants that don't. The consumer behaviors are the primary driver of why those ingredients are added to food in such amounts: It would be less costly to simply omit those ingredients, so they are there not because of how they affect cost but because of how they affect revenue.

 

[Chuckanut]

You have hit it! Just the other day I was in a restaurant having a bowl of soup. I think they must have got the water from the Great Salt Lake when they made it. The salt completely overwhelmed the flavor the the rest of the broth, the veggies and the meat. Not so good.

It's another reason to cook at home and not eat out very often, IMHO. I will say that the tsp of salt in my home made bread is nothing compared to what is in most processed and restaurant food, so I don't worry about that.

FWIW, I buy the low-salt bacon from Costco and I can't tell the difference when it's cooked and on the plate.

Also, and a bit off topic, I have found that I can cut the sugar in many baked goods by 1/3 with good results. I do notice they are a bit less sweet, but the other flavors also seem to come through better.

 

[audreyh1]

The highly ranked and reputable D.A.S.H diet indicates a direct correlation of sodium and blood pressure.
"The DASH diet and the control diet at the lower salt levels were both successful in lowering blood pressure, but the largest reductions in blood pressure were obtained by eating a combination of these two (i.e., a lower-salt version of the DASH diet). The effect of this combination at a sodium level of 1,500 mg/day was an average blood pressure reduction of 8.9/4.5 mm Hg (systolic/diastolic). The hypertensive subjects experienced an average reduction of 11.5/5.7 mm Hg.[10] The DASH-sodium results indicate that low sodium levels correlated with the largest reductions in blood pressure for participants at both pre-hypertensive and hypertensive levels, with the hypertensive participants showing the greatest reductions in blood pressure overall." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DASH_diet

I thought this was no longer accepted and that only 10% of the population is salt sensitive in that higher dietary sodium raises their blood pressure.

The rest of us don't need to worry about salt.