We know that eating too much salt is bad for your health. It can cause kidney dysfunction, increase hunger, increase water retention but also cause serious illnesses such as heart failure or high blood pressure. Despite the risks, many of us cannot do without this seasoning and many systematically re-salt their food (sometimes even before having tasted it!). So where does this appetite come from? Researchers from the University of Munich (in Germany) have looked into the question, and the answer would be hidden... in the saliva!
Enzymes in saliva
If saliva is often reduced to a simple function of humidification, we forget that it protects the mouth, participates in healing, promotes digestion and can even help us detect certain diseases (now that's for sure, we will look differently). The recent study published in the journal Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry demonstrates that it could explain our "need" to systematically add salt, or not. To reach this conclusion, the scientists divided the volunteers into two groups, according to their sensitivity to salt (tested via their reaction to a salt solution). After analyzing the composition of the participants' saliva, they discovered that salt-sensitive people have a higher level of endopeptidases, an enzyme that would have the action of "cutting" sodium molecules and increasing the taste of salt. . Thus, these people smell the salt even when it is present in low doses and necessarily consume less of it. Conversely, people with lower levels of endopeptidases have a lower perception of the taste of salt, which explains why they tend to add it to all dishes.
These results confirm that we are not all equal when it comes to salt. One can imagine that researchers will now look into a solution to harmonize everyone's perception of salt. To be continued!
