Cooking

Salt is present in most foods, but in naturally occurring foodstuffs such as meats, vegetables and fruit, it is present in very small quantities. It is often added to processed foods (such as canned foods and especially salted foods, pickled foods, and snack foods or other convenience foods), where it functions as both a preservative and a flavoring.

Health

Sodium serves a vital purpose in the human body: it helps nerves and muscles to function correctly, and it is one of the factors involved in the regulation of water content.The World Health Organization recommends that all adults should consume less than 2,000 mg of sodium (which is contained in 5 g of salt) per day.

Tips

While people have used canning and artificial refrigeration to preserve food for the last hundred years or so, salt has been the best-known food preservative, especially for meat, for many thousands of years. There are many processes other than cooking in which salt is involved. A major source of salt is seawater, which has salinity of 3.5%.