Irk of the Day: Salt

   Whenever I see a can of that popular brand of tomato soup--the one with happy kids on the label, one word comes to mind: Poison.
   I love tomato soup but most canned soups are loaded with salt. I don't like salt (my mom never used it in cooking) and I respond badly to it. Fortunately though, one can make a truly great tomato soup using 'no salt added' tomato paste as a base.
   Bread though, is another matter. There's a lot of salt in commercial bread. I eat a lot of bread and have been trying to cut down. And that's even though I eat a 'healthy' 100% whole wheat bread. (I wonder though, what 100% really means. There are a lot of ingredients other than wheat in the bread--including a fair amount of salt.) Of course, I could always buy a low sodium bread, but that's expensive and I don't like paying for what's not in my food.
   So I pulled out my old bread machine, bought some new yeast and, using six year old whole wheat flower from the dark recesses of a kitchen cabinet, made a loaf.
   Gosh, I had no idea wheat could go rancid. I took a bite of the bread and then threw it out. I had considered though, selling it as rat poison. If eating the bread didn't kill the rat, then dropping the loaf on its head surely would have.
   My second loaf (with fresh flour) turned out much better. One more source of excessive salt eliminated.
   Cigarette companies are (in my mind) justifiably excoriated for producing a harmful product. Would that food producers be held to account for lacing their products with what might well be considered toxic amounts of salt.