Sweet and salty

Every­thing sweet comes from the earth; every grain of salt emerged from the sea. Both of these ingre­di­ents are bib­li­cal; they loom large in our phys­i­cal and spir­i­tual his­to­ries. Our Judeo-Christian her­itage promised a land of milk and honey. Honey is obvi­ous but milk too is laden with sweet­ness. Car­na­tion con­densed milk, anyone?

Dr. Mar­cia Nahikan-Nelms, a nutri­tion­ist with The Ohio State Uni­ver­sity said that babies’ first response in taste tests is always to sweet. She showed pho­tos of four new­borns pro­cess­ing water, sour, bit­ter, and sweet. The for­tu­nate baby who got the dab of sugar on her tongue smiled; the oth­ers looked either indif­fer­ent or distressed!

Glu­cose not only brings a smile to our lips, it is essen­tial to our well-being. Ani­mals need sugar to sur­vive, for energy and for pro­tein con­ver­sion. A fresh cow will start to stag­ger, go off her feed, and will die if not given heavy doses of glu­cose. An IV of glu­cose is admin­is­tered imme­di­ately at the scene of an accident.

My ances­tors, new to the south­east Ohio hills, dug for salt and it is reported found nat­ural gas instead. They went away sorely dis­ap­pointed. My great aunt died of a goi­ter and my grand­mother had to have surgery.

Ghandi saw in salt a metaphor for free­dom and marched his fol­low­ers down to the sea to take it against British pro­hi­bi­tions. We put out salt blocks for our ani­mals and wild beasts know where the best salt lick is. We, how­ever, have lost our salti­ness because real food has lost its taste and salt is a sub­sti­tute for “get­ting it back!”

Because we are as a nation too hyper tense and obese, there are many edicts out which say we must forgo all sugar and salt or at least cut back. Noth­ing wrong with that. Our bod­ies and their nat­ural needs have been taken advan­tage of and we have capit­u­lated to processed foods because they are eas­ier and they require no thought. The price for this lazi­ness will be bureau­crats telling us, forc­ing us, to forgo salt and sugar. What was once essen­tial is now over­whelm­ing us for sure, and we come close to sur­ren­der­ing our free­dom over what we eat.

Because as Ghandi knew instinc­tively, nature pro­vides freely what the British con­trolled, we should also revisit the amaz­ing avail­abil­ity of sweet­ness from the good earth — wheat, sugar cane and beet bulbs, milk, nec­tar, maple syrup and molasses, peas, corn, car­rots. With­out bar­ley or rice or pota­toes there would be no whiskey, saki or vodka.

We are sur­rounded by sweet­ness. Our bod­ies love it, need it. We don’t really have to relin­quish sugar or salt. We just must remem­ber once again the essen­tials and forgo the false addic­tions wait­ing always to be co-opted by a third party, a cadre of food police telling us how to live. We were born to sweet­ness and we need salt. And while we can­not do with­out salt or sugar, we can do with­out the sloth that goes with capit­u­la­tion to “pro­fes­sion­als” and to proces­sors who have beguiled us with their image rich pack­ag­ing and promotions.

We are more than our bod­ies. We know the value of a land giv­ing freely of itself. Let us rejoice and be glad and not be lulled like lotus eaters into los­ing self-control, a com­mod­ity not yet cap­tured by media giants.

We still have that choice. Or do we?

Sylvia Zim­mer­man is the owner of Ful­ton Creek Jer­sey Cheese in Rich­wood. She holds two grad­u­ate degrees and, when not work­ing on her farm or pur­su­ing her inter­est in sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, writes her own blog.

Posted by Sylvia Zimmerman on May 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.