Salt Assault

In “The Salt of the Earth” (Dec. 3), Michael Roberts makes two errors about his topic. Perhaps the error is because he was absent the day his junior high science teacher told the class that we sense only four tastes--sweet, etc.--and then misread someone’s notes, replacing the word “tastes” with “flavors.” In fact, we can sense an enormous number of flavors, limited only by the resolution of our sense of smell. The tastes, which he correctly identifies as sweet, sour, bitter and salt (and in the minds of some--metallic), are detected by receptors on the tongue. This may be a matter of semantics but most biologists are fussy about it.

The second error is more in my arena of lore as a chemist. Roberts waxes mystical about a very simple phenomenon. He seems to imply that the mechanism for tasting large things is different from that for small ones: “. . . the larger flakes are sensed differently on the tongue than the fine powder. . . .” Both coarse and fine (and even Kosher) salt is in the solid state and both must be in solution to be tasted. The reason the fine salt tastes “saltier” is that it dissolves faster than the coarse. If Roberts were to swish some of each in his mouth with a little water, he could verify that the tastes were indeed equally salty when both had dissolved. I cannot comment on the synergy of hot dogs with sweet relish; I do not care for either.

--CHARLES O. CUNNINGHAM

Long Beach