why do frozen dinners have such high sodium/salt content when frozen meat can last up to a year before going bad?

Question

I was watching a guy on yt review hungry man tv dinners and one of the TV dinners had 2,400 mgs of sodium. Why do they add so much?

In: Other

Answer 1

Spices are expensive, salt is cheap. To make something taste good, you need to add a lot of flavor (spices). A cheap alternative is to oversalt stuff and add minimal spices. Salt makes the brain interpret other flavors stronger.

Glutamate (Umami) also has the same effect on the brain, so if needing a low sodium diet, you can add glutamate rich items instead of salt. But these are protein-based and much more expensive on a large scale than salt is as well.