Why does salt make food taste better?
In: Chemistry
tl;dr – Salt just makes food taste more like itself. It does this by multiplying the signals from the tongue to the brain. Beef tastes beefier.
Salt is required for most life to function, so there is a biological drive to seek out sources of salt. Animals of all shapes and sizes seek out salt, with some travelling huge distances for it. But animals don’t cook food, nor do they seem to combine foods together that ‘taste good’ so why do animals seek out salt, specifically?
Salt is required to keep the electrolyte levels in balance, which is what allows a whole bunch of things in the body to work, but the heart/lungs are especially important. So the biological drive for salt is because it is required for life, because it is controls the two moving parts in your body you need to live: Heart and Lungs… But why does it TASTE good?!?
Simply put, it doesn’t. I know, slightly disappointing. What salt does is make all of the signals that your tongue sends to the brain (things like ‘acidic’ and ‘fatty’ and ‘sweet’) cranked up to the perfect levels that your brain loves. Your body needs a specific amount of salt in it, but too much and it will be very bad. This is why you can have ‘too much’ salt in things. It is one of the very few things that we eat that our body has both a detector and a limiter for.
Think about sugar. If you take a glass of water, and dump a bunch of sugar into it and stirred it until it won’t dissolve at all anymore–you would probably be able to drink it. No worries. It might be a little gross, but you would be fine. If you do that with salt, you will probably throw up. Yes. Gross, but it highlights an important fact: Salt has an upper limit. Also while drinking it, you would most likely have had to stop several times. Not true with the sugar water.
So salt hits the tongue, dissolves into the saliva, and then triggers the salt sensors–and once the salt sensors are hit, all the extra salt latches onto all of the other flavors and hits all of the other sensors along the way. Making everything taste more like itself.
Salt enhances the flavor of foods, and humans perceive foods with salt content favorably because of our biology. Nearly all foods naturally contain sodium and potassium, which are both essential minerals for bodily functions.
There are two separate pathways that are responsible for detecting salt and sending that information on to the brain. The first mechanism is well understood and occurs via a channel known as ENaC (epithelial sodium channel). Scientists know that a second pathway exists, but it has not yet been identified. The second pathway responds to sodium and other salts (including potassium chloride) and provides information about the intensity of salt taste and the unpleasantness associated with strongly salty stimuli. In other words humans like it at low concentrations, but not high concentrations. Salt has also been effective in reduction of bitterness perception.
[Source: Institute of Food Technologists](https://www.ift.org/~/media/food%20technology/pdf/2016/05/0516_feat_1_scienceoftaste.pdf)
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