This chapter begins with a review of the non-taste or flavor-related roles of salt and other sodium-containing compounds in food. A number of other sodium-containing compounds are also used for increasing the safety and shelf life of foods or creating physical properties. In other applications, sodium levels remain high because salt plays additional functional roles, such as improving texture. For some foods, sodium still plays a role in reducing the growth of pathogens and organisms that spoil products and reduce their shelf life. However, taste is not the only reason for the continued use of high levels of sodium in foods. As discussed in Chapter 3, the tastes and flavors associated with historical salt use have come to be expected, and the relatively low cost of enhancing the palatability of processed foods has become a key rationale for the use of salt in food ( Van der Veer, 1985). Because of the emergence of refrigeration and other methods of food preservation, the need for salt as a preservative has decreased ( He and MacGregor, 2007), but sodium levels, especially in processed foods, remain high. Historically, the main reason for the addition of salt to food was for preservation.
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