Why does salt make food taste so good?
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Hiring? Indeed is all you need. You're listening to Brains On, where we're serious about being curious. Brains On is supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Oh, hey friends, Sandin here. I'm at Brains On headquarters to sell my pals on my latest genius level idea, Sandin's Salt Spiriences. They're going to love it.

Oh good, here comes Molly now. She LOVES all my schemes. I mean genius level ideas.

Sandin, why are you ringing the doorbell? Your keys are literally in your hand. Why, hey there, neighbor. Do you have a taste for adventure? Of course I do. My nickname is Molly Adventure Bloom. You know that. Well then, I'm here to sell you on the ultimate adventure. A fabulous salt experience. Sell me salt? Sandin, we literally have bags of it in

in the Labrador Kitchen. Molly, Molly, Molly, Molly, my sweet, innocent, unsalted friend. I said the salt experience. The salt-sperience, if you will. Like, for instance, want to relax by the seaside but have no time to travel? Try Sandin's Make Your Own Ocean Kit. Woo!

A jar of salt water? I think you mean your own private ocean. Can't you just hear the waves? The seagulls? Oh, I can see you're relaxing already, Molly. Sandin, I don't know if this is... Or how about our winter salt kit? Just throw Sandin salt in the air, and it's just like it's snowing. Pfft!

Girls, mouthful of salt. Want to hang out with all your cool friends who are in a band, but you don't know how to play any instruments? Well, just bring along your trusty jar of Sandin's magical musical salt, and boom. Now, you're a percussionist. Sandin, I have to go get ready to tape a Brains On episode. This has been...

Interesting. Wait, wait, Molly! I haven't even told you about the best part. You can eat this stuff too! Yeah, by the handful, see? Oh, that is very salty.

You're listening to Brains On from APM Studios. I'm Molly Bloom, and my co-host today is Yasmin from Vancouver, British Columbia. Hi, Yasmin. Hi, Molly. Today, we're spicing things up with an extra flavorful subject—

It's the science of salt. We're answering this question from Anna. I was wondering, why does salt make everything taste so good? It's hard to imagine life without salt. Boring, bland pretzels. Forgettable french fries. Dull, dull pickles. Craveless casseroles. No, thank you. Salt improves so many foods, it's simply ridiculous. It's the science of salt.

Yasmin, are you more of a salty snack or sweet snack person? Personally, I think I'm a bit of both, but I don't like overly salty snacks or overly sweet snacks. Yeah, me too. So do you do a lot of cooking at home? I really like baking and cooking.

I'm even doing a science project for the science fair where I'm going to be making cupcakes and using different egg substitutes. And my whole thing is about if different egg substitutes make a difference in the way a cupcake will bake. Oh, that's super cool. You'll have to tell me the results because my niece is actually allergic to eggs. So this would be super useful information. Yeah.

That's such a cool experiment. And you've lived in different countries, right? Yes. I've been back and forth traveling all over the world in my life. Most recently, I lived in Japan. I've been going back and forth between Japan and Canada, really. When I was really little, like one

one years old. I lived in Brazil for a year because my dad's family is from Brazil. So you've had a lot of experience lately with Japanese food and Canadian food. Do you feel like there's a difference between like how salt is used in Japanese food versus like the food you have when you're in Vancouver? I feel like

In Japanese cuisine, there's lots of salty food like miso and stuff, but I feel like sugar is used alongside that in quite a few dishes. And I feel like there's a lot of different flavors involved.

That in food in Canada, I don't like fine. Even if I go to a Japanese restaurant, I'm like, that's not the same as it tastes in Japan. Why can't you make it the same? Yeah, I feel like when I have Japanese food, there's just like so many different kinds of saltiness that you experience. Like the seaweed sheets are kind of salty and soy sauce and miso and it's all so delicious. I love Japanese food. Me too. Now this episode is making me so hungry.

Salt is actually made up of little crystals. A crystal and a true treasure. Ahoy! Ahoy!

Molly, did you invite the pirate ship into the studio? It wasn't me this time, I swear. Yar, how's it going, mateys? Wait, is that producer Anna Goldfield in a pirate hat and adorable floppy dog ears? This is delightful, though. Not what I was expecting. I also did not have this on my bingo card for today. I'm a salty sea dog. Get it?

Captain of the finest ship and saltiest crew to ever sail the seven seas.

I'm also here to talk about salt and why we love to eat it. Oh, great. Perfect timing, Anna. Well, if there's one thing us pirates are known for, it's our impeccable timing and punctuality. Um, I would have gone for big ships and pirate flags. Or parrots. Or eye patches. Walking planks. Okay, yes. But we also have great timing.

Look, I brought the brains on Zoom, Ray, so I could show you guys salt up close. I saw Sandon in the hallway, and he offered to sell me some salt for just three easy payments of $39.99. Total bargain. Again, we literally have bags of salt in the Labrador Kitchen that you can use for free. Oh, that's a better idea. And I can check on the batch of soft pretzels I was making earlier. To the Labrador Kitchen!

Here we are! Welcome to the Labber Kitchen, Yasmin. Wow, it smells amazing in here. There's so many things bubbling away on the stove. Mm-hmm. Mark's working on his chili recipe and stewing some prunes. My soft pretzels are in the oven. And I think Bob is trying to develop less flavorful water. Oh, check out that giant shelf of pickles. That's my parade of pickles project. No big deal, but they're really coming along. And?

And here are the bags of good old, extremely free, salt. Let's fire up the zoom ray and have a look. Wow! The grains of salt are shaped like tiny cubes. Awesome, right? There's more than one kind of salt, and some look like pyramids or staircases or even snowflakes under a microscope.

The salt we use in the kitchen is called sodium chloride. And that name comes from the atoms it's made of. I've heard of atoms. They're super tiny building blocks that make up everything in the universe. Mm-hmm. Sodium chloride is made of two atoms, a sodium atom and a chlorine atom.

each hugging each other with their chemical bonds. Aww, that's cute! And sodium chloride is what we find in everything from kosher salt to Himalayan pink salt to that fancy flaky gray salt. Is sodium chloride the same stuff that makes the ocean salty? It sure is. All the salt that we use in food comes from two places. It's either dug out of the ground or collected from seawater. Either way, it's all still sodium chloride. So why do we love putting salt in our food? It's all in our heads.

When you put food in your mouth, your tongue sends signals to your brain about what that stuff is. Your brain takes those signals and translates them. What we experience as taste is that translation. Every taste? Sweet, sour, bitter, all that jazz? I don't know if we can taste jazz, but yeah, all tastes are translated by our brain.

And that's really important. If our taste buds sense stuff in food that our body needs, our brain goes, heck yeah! That gives us the feeling that what we're eating is delicious. Stuff that's harmful often tastes very bitter or sharp. And that is our brain telling us, nope! Do not eat! Our sense of taste protects us. And since our taste buds and brains like salt, we must need it. We do. To work, our brains and bodies need sodium. But

But we can't make sodium inside our body. Instead, it has to come from the things that we eat and drink. So we eat things with salt to get the sodium our bodies need. Yes, but we also constantly lose salt, mostly through P.E. So to keep our brains and bodies happy, we need to eat salty things fairly often.

And fun fact, sports drinks actually have a little salt in them. If you're doing sweaty activities, you might need to replace your body's supply of sodium. But how come we don't drink ocean water then? It's full of salt. Yes, but definitely not refreshing. That's because there's too much of a good thing. Ocean water has way more salt than our bodies can handle. And drinking a bunch of it would make you feel pretty sick. That's why we don't want to add too much salt to our foods either. ♪

My pretzels are done. Arr! Help yourselves. Now, if you'll excuse this salty sea dog, the ocean, she calls to me. I'm off to sail around, eat pretzels. Oh, so good. And sing sea shanties. Anchors away! Thanks for stopping by, Anna. And please take the seagulls with you. They're getting feathers everywhere, not to mention all the poop. Catch you later, shipmates. Let's go, gulls. Ah! Ah!

Well, it's time to spice up your day with a little listening challenge. Yasmin, get ready for the... Yasmin, are you ready for the mystery sound? Yes! Awesome. Here it is. Okay. I have no idea what this is. Do you have any idea? I think it might be like a saw sawing through wood.

And maybe like they're changing the setting of the power or something that makes the sound sound different halfway through. That is a great guess. Let's hear it again. Any different thoughts this time? I kind of feel like I need a moment to think about this. Yeah, it sounded almost like a musical to me. So I'm going to guess that it's like a family of groundhogs.

And they're like doing vocal warmups, like lip trills. Groundhogs make vocal exercises. Yeah, you know, that's a really good point. I feel like your saw idea is probably better. Maybe it's like one of those hand frothers. Yes. Okay. I like that idea. We'll come back to this at the end of the show, after the credits. We'll hear it again, get another chance to guess and hear the answer. So stick around.

We're making an episode about trends and how things become cool. And it got us wondering, what kind of fad would you like to start? Maybe you think it would be funny if everyone started wearing their shirts inside out. Or you want to make it totally in to paint your fingernails neon orange. What do you think, Yasmin? What trend would you like to start? I think it's kind of hard to say because some...

Fads that can be kind of really wasteful or harmful to the environment, like using lots of plastic. Can we start a fad that's good for the environment? Like maybe using recycled fabrics to make like stuffed animals or something that people would carry around. Who knows? Yeah, maybe we can start a fad where people just swap clothes. So instead of going out to buy something new, you're like, oh, my friend and I swapped shirts.

So I get to wear her shirt for a while. That'd be cool. There's so many different trends. Like you don't have to buy something for it to be a trend, right? You can start a trend where you just start wearing pencils in your hair every day or something. Oh, I have an idea. Oh, yeah. A trend where everybody exchanges cookies. Yes. I know.

I am down with that trend. Way better than exchanging shirts because then I get to eat cookies. Smart. Well, listeners, record a description of the trend you'd like to start and send it to us at brainson.org slash contact. While you're there, send us your mystery sounds, drawings, and questions. Like this one. Hi, my name is Simon and I'm from North Carolina.

And why can't kids go to space? You can find answers to questions like these on the Moment of Um podcast, a short dose of facts and fun every weekday. Find Moment of Um and more at BrainsOn.org. And keep listening. Brains On Universe is a family of podcasts for kids and their adults. Since you're a fan of Brains On, you'll love the other shows in our universe. Come on, let's explore.

It's alien laundry day. While I wash my nose mufflers and tummy togas, I'll listen to a new podcast. How about Everago, my favorite history podcast? Whoa, I was not expecting that to work. Or for it to sound this good. That's the DJ Dolo technique. DJ Dolo!

When I say pizza, you say bagel. Pizza! Zorp! Signal down! Stay right there, tummy togas. Must find Forever Ago now! Listen to Forever Ago wherever you get your podcasts.

Today's episode is sponsored by Gab. Parents, I'm sure you've noticed how your kid looks at your phone. They see us staring at it. It's a big part of our lives. And naturally, they want one. A

A lot of parents don't want their kids to have a smartphone, with good reason. But some parents want a safe way for kids to be able to communicate with them, the parents, or their friends and family. I want my kid to know how to use smart devices to her benefit without feeling like they're starting to take over. Gab's safety benefits make that approach feel much more doable. Gab is the leader in safe phones and watches for kids, teens, and tweens.

With no social media apps, no internet browser, and GPS tracking, Gab devices are built specifically to keep kids and teens safely connected. Protecting your kids has never been easier. For the best deals, sign up to Gab today. No contract required at gab.com slash brains on. That's gab, G-A-B-B dot com slash brains on. gab.com slash brains on. Terms and conditions apply.

Today's episode is sponsored by Greenlight. Who taught you about money? Was it your parents? Your school? Most of us learned about saving and budgeting way later than we should have. But here's the good news. You can give your kids a head start with Greenlight. Greenlight is a debit card and money app made for families that lets kids learn how to save, invest, and spend wisely. I love answering kids' questions, but a lot of time the answer to kids' questions is, I don't know. And I don't know how to answer kids' questions.

And I don't know a lot when it comes to teaching kids about money. So that's why Greenlight is a super helpful tool and one that I'm glad to have. Greenlight is the easy, convenient way for parents to raise financially smart kids and families to navigate life together. Parents can send money to their kids and keep an eye on kids' spending and saving. Start your risk-free Greenlight trial today at greenlight.com slash brains on. That's greenlight.com slash brains on to get started.

greenlight.com slash brains on. You are listening to Brains On. I'm Yasmin. And I'm Molly. And we've been filling our brains with the science of salt. The salt we use in our food is a crystal made of sodium and chlorine. And it comes from two places. We either dig it out of the ground or dry out seawater until only the salt is left.

Our bodies need salt to survive, and we get it by eating and drinking salty things. And just like with other stuff we need, like sugar and fat, our brain sends us happy signals when we taste salty things. But too much salt at once is bad for us. Now that we know about salt itself, let's talk about how it is used in cooking. There are tons of food that need salt, but aren't really salty themselves. And sometimes you can use salt to get foods ready to be cooked.

We were curious about how all that works, so we invited a special guest to join us in the Labrador kitchen. Her name is Priya Krishna. Priya is a superstar food journalist and all-around kitchen expert. She even wrote a cookbook for kids called Priya's Kitchen Adventures. Oh, and that's probably her now.

Molly, Yasmin, it's so nice to see you. Hi, Priya. Welcome to the Labra Kitchen. Thanks for having me. Oh, we're so excited to have you. I have a couple questions. First off, how did you get interested in cooking? I got interested in cooking because of my mom. She...

grew up in a kitchen with a mother who hated cooking, like really hated. But my mom always loved watching her grandmother cook. And so when she immigrated to the United States in 1980, she taught herself to cook from her memories of India and from watching television shows from chefs like Julia Child and Jacques Pepin. And

And so growing up, I would just sit on the kitchen island and watch her sizzle spices and ghee and chop onions and wash cilantro. And I just became obsessed with cooking just from seeing her. Did you always like cooking when you were a kid?

You know, funnily enough, my mom loved having me watch her, but she rarely let me actually cook. I am a lefty. A lot of kitchen equipment is made for right-handed people. And so my mom always said it would make her so scared seeing me hold a knife with my left hand. And

And so I was really limited to stuff that didn't require chopping or using the oven. So I made a lot of fruit suspended in Jell-O and like biscuits using pancake mix. That was a lot of my cooking. Why is salt so important in cooking and baking? What a great question. I feel like salt is everything in cooking. Think about cooking.

When you listen to an amazing song, there's the melody, there's the instruments, and then there's the guy who kind of mixes all of those sounds to bring it all together into a really cool song. Like that's what salt does. It takes all of those components and it makes it sound cohesive.

How do you know how much salt to put into a recipe? So recipes might call for certain amounts of salt, but the reality is that everyone has a different preference for salt. One test that I like to do that my friend David taught me was if you put 10 glasses of water in front of you and one glass has...

no salt and one glass has like a tablespoon of salt and then put different amounts in each of those starting from zero and ending with a tablespoon and mix it and drink it and see what tastes too salty to you and what tastes just right to you. So if you like something that's like closer to the no salt side, you're like, oh, I don't like things super salty. If you like something that's like

glass of water with the full tablespoon, then you like your food really salty. And I feel like that'll give you a sense of like, oh, I should probably pare back a little bit or, oh, I'll probably want more salt than the recipe asked for. There is no perfect amount of salt. There's only the amount that's perfect to you. Did you do that salt test your friend David recommended? Yes. I like my food very salty. I learned. Are there differences between different kinds of salt and do they taste different? Yeah.

Yeah, different kinds of salt will have different shapes and different flavors and also like different salt levels. Like certain types of salt are less salty than others. So like when a recipe says like use kosher salt,

Should you listen to that and like only use the salt they're recommending? I always say do the salt test. And if a recipe calls for a teaspoon and your salt test yielded that you don't like things salty, maybe start with half of that amount of salt.

If your salt test yielded that you like things really salty, start with that full teaspoon of salt and then taste it and see how you feel. The thing about salt is that you can always add, but you can't take away. So I like to start modest and then keep adding. Why do sugar and salt taste so good together, even though most people think of them as opposites?

I feel like this is an opposites attract situation. It's like why you love sour candy. Like when I bite into sour candy and it's really sweet and then you get that really sour flavor, like that contrast is just really, really appealing in your mouth.

What's cool is that when you have like a salty, sweet chocolate chip cookie, you're getting that like satisfaction of the sweetness, but you get that salt that makes the sweet taste all that much better. Just like salt supercharges chicken flavor, salt also supercharges like the flavors in a cookie. So it'll make like chocolate taste more chocolatey. It'll make, you know, maple taste maple-ier. So I feel like salt always belongs in sweet things.

Why did you decide to write a cookbook for kids? I decided to write a cookbook for kids because when I was a kid, I was just so excited and enthusiastic about cooking. And a lot of the books that I saw, the food was really bland. And it sort of felt like it had been dumbed down for kids, both in terms of the flavors and the taste.

And the ingredient lists. And obviously I wasn't like fine chopping when I was younger, but I wanted a book that would empower me, that would teach me about different flavors and different cultures, that would get me excited to get in the kitchen.

And so I wrote a book inspired by my travels when I was younger. My mom worked in the airline industry, so we got to travel a lot for work. And so we went to places like Egypt and China and Japan, and I got so into eating and trying different foods in those countries. And my mom and I would come home and we'd recreate all the things that we had tasted. So I wanted to take kids along

on that journey with me and also really write a cookbook that would expand their minds and make them feel empowered as cooks. Awesome. Priya, you are so fun. And my daughter and I look forward to cooking all the recipes in your cookbook. Thank you so much. Thanks for stopping by. Goodbye.

Salt is a crystal that we get from dried ocean water or from underground. Because our bodies need salt but can't produce it, we have to eat small amounts of it every so often. To make sure we do that, our brains are hardwired to find it delicious. Plus, salt makes other foods taste better by boosting their natural flavors. That's it for this episode of Brains On.

This episode was written by Anna Goldfield and Lauren Humpert. It was produced by Rosie DuPont. Our editors are Shayla Farzan and Sandin Totten. Fact-checking by Rebecca Rand. We had engineering help from Alex Simpson and Furby Midgley with sound design by Rachel Breeze. Original theme music by Mark Sanchez.

We had production help from the rest of the Brains on Universe team. Molly Bloom. Nico Gonzalez-Whistler. Ruby Guthrie. Joshua Ray. Mark Sanchez. Charlotte Traver. Anna Weigel. And... Aran Woldeselassie. Beth Perlman is our executive producer, and the executives in charge of APM Studios are Chandra Kavati and Joanne Griffith. Special thanks to Kim Barduhl, Arnaldo Shimura, and Yasmin's friend at Tupper.

Brains On is a non-profit public radio program. There are lots of ways to support the show. Join Smarty Pass for bonus episodes and ad-free versions of all of our shows. You can become a Smarty Pass subscriber today for just $5 a month or $45 a year. Or head to BrainsOn.org. While you're there, you can send us mystery sounds, drawings, and questions. Speaking of mystery sounds, Yasmin, are you ready to hear the mystery sound again? Definitely. Okay, let's hear it.

A robot singing, and that's my final guess. What do you think? Kind of thinking about my answers before, but it might also be one of the, like, garburators in your sink. Oh, yeah, those things under your kitchen sink that grind up food when it goes down the drain. They're called garburators in Canada, but sometimes we call them garbage disposals or insincurators in the U.S. All right, so what do you think? What's your guess? Garbage disposal? Saw? Saw?

Milk frother? I feel like it's a combination between one of those. Okay, it's a brand new machine that you can use as a saw, milk frother, or garbage disposal. It's brand new. I like it. It's one of those. I'm not sure which. It's one of them. All right, let's hear the answer. My name's Mary, and I'm from Philadelphia, PA, and that was the sound of my electric toothbrush.

Electric toothbrush. Come on. I have one of those at home. I knew the sounds felt familiar, but I couldn't place it. Oh, mystery sounds. They get us every time. That was a tricky one. I mean, you're close, though, because you heard like a motor going, right? You heard the motor from the milk frother or the saw.

I was not close at all with the robot singing, but I guess maybe now when you use your electric toothbrush, you can think of it as a robot singing to you while you brush your teeth. That reminds me I need to get new batteries for that. See? Brain's on helping you remember your to-do list. Now it's time for the Brain's Honor Roll. These are the incredible kids who keep this show going with their questions, ideas, mystery sounds, drawings, and high fives.

Thank you.

from Peterborough, Ontario, Blake from Liberty Lake, Washington, Otto and Elise from Ann Arbor, Michigan, Aiden from Qualicom Beach, British Columbia, Arthur from Berlin, Germany, Maggie from San Diego, Fiona and Maisie from Yorktown Heights, New York, Georgia from Plantation, Florida, Robert from Los Altos, California, Elizabeth from Cedarburg,

Wisconsin, Hope and Lucy from Carbondale, Colorado, Max from Vancouver, British Columbia, Isla from Burlingame, California, Abby and Sarah from California, Lucia, Lily, Adrian, and Anna from Alexandria, Virginia, Carrington from Canada, Kiki from Culver City, California, Elsie from Australia, John, Cora, and Gideon from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, Evan from Apple Valley, California, Holden, Aria, Lila, and Sadie from Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin,

Thank you.

♪♪♪

Thanks for listening. If you need a screen-free way to entertain your kids while showing them how fun learning can be, then Who Smarted is for you. Join the creators of Brain Games for one of the funniest educational podcasts on the planet. Who Smarted combines hilarious storytelling and cool characters to create a world that curious kids love to enjoy. Personally, I recommend you check out one of their recent episodes on Mozart or mermaids.

Join this educational universe created by STEM consultants, writers, and producers who strive to ignite, amplify, and satisfy children's natural curiosity. Find Who Smarted on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.