Why does salt make everything taste better? Why do humans like it?
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Salt is super important! If you don’t have enough salt in your body you wont retain water, and you will dehydrate much quicker. If you get seriously low on salt, it might not matter how much water you drink, you’ll not be able to uptake any so you’ll still be dehydrated. So salt is super important for pretty much all animals. It’s why some coastal animals will occasionally drink a few sips from the ocean, or why animals love to congregate at salt licks.
Humans in particular also sweat. It’s a super rare ability all things considered. But sweat works so well in part because it contains salt, the salinity of your sweat allows your sweat to take more heat away when it evaporates. So human need for salt is more than most animals because of sweat.
Salt is also super important to our nervous system, where it acts as an electrolyte. When we get low on salt we lose control of our muscles, we cramp, we get weaker, not because our muscles are worse but because we cant control them. because our nerves arent working. Because they don’t have enough electrolytes to be properly conductive.
So yeah, salt is super important. And like most things critical to our survival, our bodies make it feel good. For us that means salty things taste good.
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