SpiceLines

Big bold flavors are the latest holy grail for snack food manufacturers. Frito Lay recently launched First, Second and Third Degree Burn Doritos that are laced with jalapeno, buffalo and habanero chiles. According to Gottfried, the new technologies are also capable of creating subtle nuances of flavor: “A simple strawberry flavor can range from tart, just-picked strawberry to almost candy-like sweetness,” she writes. Dr. Pepper tested “30 different cherry profiles” before introducing its new Snapple cherry soda.

Our passion for palate-tickling tastes reflects the soaring popularity of Thai, Chinese and other ethnic cuisines, as well as broad consumer exposure to the culinary antics of Food Network and other media chefs. If you doubt that ethnic flavors have gone mainstream, check out recipes for Thai Grilled Flatbread with Mango and Sweet Chili Sauce or Grilled Potato Salad with Cilantro Lime Chimichurri in McCormick’s 2010 Flavor Forecast.

But it’s worth noting that some extreme flavors would seem odd to other cultures. Rob Peterson, Wrigley’s chief innovation officer, observes, “The American fruit flavor or mint flavor would taste very strong or sweet to a Chinese consumer.”

Personally, I’ll stick with the naturally pungent, intensely cooling Kentucky Colonel spearmint, now flourishing in the garden, when making mint flavored drinks and other dishes. Mojitos, anyone?

Update on the Salt Wars

“The Hard Sell on Salt” (The New York Times, May 30, 2010, pp. 1 and 14) details the food industry’s pushback against efforts by everyone from Michelle Obama to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to cut our consumption of salt. It’s required reading for anyone who cares about our nation’s health and the food we eat.

Times reporter Michael Moss writes that Cargill, Inc, which makes Diamond Crystal Kosher and Sea Salts, launched Salt 101, a video campaign in which TV chef Alton Brown urges viewers to “make sure you have plenty of salt in your kitchen at all times” and to sprinkle it over everything from fresh fruit salad to chocolate cookies, ice cream and “even coffee.”

Salt does indeed enhance the flavor of, say, juicy watermelon or dark chocolate, but the problem is not the sodium chloride we use in the kitchen. It’s the massive amount of salt used to boost flavor in processed foods. Without it, many such foods become almost inedible.

In a demonstration Kellogg showed that its popular snack food cracker, Cheez-its, lost its “golden yellow hue…became sticky when chewed…and tasted not merely bland, but medicinal” when the salt was removed. Moreover, “a generous cup of Cheez-its delivers one-third of the daily amount of sodium recommended for most Americans,” writes Moss. The recommended amount is less than 1,500 mg per day—not the 2,300 mg often referred to on food labels.

To stall regulation, some processed food manufacturers have resorted to “blaming consumers for resisting efforts to reduce salt in all foods, pointing to, as Kellogg put it in a letter to a federal nutrition advisory committee, ‘the virtually intractable nature of the appetite for salt.’”

I am a salt lover, but blaming the consumer for craving salty food is a cynical end run by an industry that heavily depends on cheap sodium chloride to kick up flavor in products as varied as Corn Flakes, Chicken Noodle Soup and even the peach dessert accompanying a Conagra Healthy Choice meal. Salt conceals a multitude of ills, including bitterness and the “’warmed over flavor’ [of processed foods] which…can make meat taste like ‘cardboard’ or ‘damp dog hair.’”

Which raises the question: What exactly are we eating when we eat heavily salted processed foods?

Salt is wondrous in the home kitchen, but maybe not so great on the pantry shelf.