Most of the cooking schools teach cooks to add salt several times throughout the cooking process, it's no wonder that their recipes are incredibly salty! Alton Brown, whom my older son adores, is one of the worst offenders. Some people, myself included, often refer to the Culinary Institute of America as the Sodium Institute of America.

It cracks me up to see something labeled as 'healthy' in the store and then see that it has 900 or more mg of sodium per serving. I'm especially leery of the 'low fat' versions of foods, because they often have higher salt content that the regular versions. (I guess it needs more salt to replace the fat taste.)

Graham Kerr, who many of us may remember from the Galloping Gourmet shows back in the 70's, had a heart attack and subsequently revised and republished a lot of his recipes to lower both the fat and salt content. But I don't think those later books sold as well, because they were a bit preachy.

I'm not sure what you meant, Aaron, but a teaspoon of salt is about 5690 milligrams (2300 mg of sodium), not 12.

Some aromatics need to be added later in the cooking cycle because they either dissipate if added too soon or turn bitter if cooked for a long time. Vanilla is always added at the end, and basil will turn bitter if added too soon. By contrast, bay leaf needs to be added early in the cooking cycle, because it has to be cooked a long time to extract the flavor.

Onion if added early will caramelize and turn sweeter, if added towards the end it retains more of the sharp ohion flavor.

Salt is a complicated ingredient, it has culinary purposes beyond just flavor. Because it is hygroscopic (it absorbs water), it affects the food it's added to. For example, it is commonplace to 'sweat' vegetables like zucchini or eggplant by sprinkling them with salt to extract the moisture. What I don't know is whether if you then rinse them off if that removes most of the salt. I'll have to do some research into that.

Similarly, adding salt to bread dough will tighten the dough considerably. Kidpizza/Cass is one of many bakers who recommend waiting until towards the end of the mixing cycle to add salt to bread.

I don't brine foods, so it hasn't been an issue for me. Many marinades are also a bit on the salty side, but I haven't done much of that lately, either.

Alton was big on brining, too, I wonder if he's changed his mind on that? Graham Kerr wrote a few books after his wife's stroke and heart attack on his 'minimax' approach to cooking, but I don't think they were big sellers, the one I looked at was a bit preachy. (One thing I've found in my own cooking is that my wife doesn't like it if I talk about how I'm not using salt, so instead I've been just talking about the spices and techniques I'm using to add flavor. She hasn't noticed that I cut the salt in my honey wheat bread in half.)

I suspect brining doesn't really add that much salt, because it only penetrates the surface a bit. Injection of salty broths could be a bigger problem with things like turkeys.

By definition a salt is what you get when you combine an acid with a base and the hydrogen in the acid is replaced by the metal (or cation) in the base. (NaCl is a salt, but there are many other salts.) There can be other by-products when you combine an acid and a base. (For example, combine vinegar and baking soda and you will get lots of carbon dioxide.)

According to the cardiology web sites, I'm supposed to count all forms of sodium, including things like sodium bicarbonate and the small amount of sodium present in flour. That's why I just bought some low-sodium baking powder to try out.

I find pouring a cup of bleach down the drain every few weeks works pretty good, too. But if you have a septic tank, I'm not sure if that's recommended or not.