Mayor pinches salt! Chef throws in spoon!

Now, Bloomberg has salt in his sights, comparing its dangers to those of asbestos in the classroom. (Yes, I know it’s a leap, but he’s the billionaire, not me.):

“If we know there’s asbestos in a school room what do you expect us to do?” Bloomberg shot back at reporters questioning his new initiative. “Say it’s not our business? I don’t think so. The same thing is true with food and smoking and a lot of things….”

Bloomberg is pushing a plan to cut the amount of salt in packaged and restaurant foods by 25 percent over the next five years. He says the initiative is voluntary

Restaurant chefs boiling over mayor’s salt crackdrown – NYPOST.com.

Now I’m all in favor of cutting back on salt–linked as it is to high blood pressure and unattractive stomach bulge–but good luck on this one, Mr. Mayor. Already the city’s chefs are sizzling and snickering  at yet another attempt to change their recipes.

As David Chang, owner of the Momofuku Noodle Bar, pointed out to the Post, cooks started salting food about five minutes after they discovered fire. “You need salt to draw out flavor,” he said.

Unfortunately, he’s right–at least right in the sense of how we’ve trained our taste buds. The only thing that makes food taste better than salt is butter.

I once took a class with the Julia Child of Italian cooking, Marcella Hazan. Whichever dish she was stirring–risotto, lamb stew, seafood filling–always ended up with Marcella grabbing a handful–yep, a handful!–of salt and tossing it in the pot.

The first time she did it, the class, collectively, gasped. And she got downright angry when we suggested that maybe we might cut back? “It is not too much! This is right for the dish.”

I, personally, don’t cook with any salt, and yet keeping the salt intake down is still challenging. For one thing, you will never find a product labeled both “low calorie” and “low sodium”–if they take out the fat, they pack in the salt. Even “low sodium” cans pack in too much. And if you eat out at all, you’re walking into a salt mine.

I wonder if Mayor Bloomberg would let us into his kitchen.