An article written by Fairbanks journalist Amy Loeffler will appear in the prestigious anthology of national significance “Best American Food Writing” that will be published this week Harper Collins.
“Human beings have evolved to be able to have this mineral become a vital component of the chemistry in our bodies,” Loeffler said. “We could literally die in the absence of salt.”
Loeffler is a scientist writer. Her story selected to be included in the edition 2023 of Best American Food Writing is about the science behind salt’s relationship to the love of sex throughout the human past.
“We usually think of with sex and love, and everything else associated with romance as sweet. While doing some study, I discovered some academic research — if when you talk about the ins and outs of lovemaking and sex. there’s a lot of things made using salt and are inspired by salt,” she said.
To provide a brief explanation of how salt affects the brain of humans, she set out a variety of food items and salts for a taste.
“So what happens when you sprinkle salt on fruits? In tropical areas where there’s lots of fruit, people prefer to sprinkle salt on their fruit since sodium ions work with your tongue to cut down bitterness. They neutralize taste buds that are sensitive to bitterness and the fruit tastes more sweet when you add salt to it,” Loeffler stated.
She says that, after she was introduced to an entrepreneur who was drying waters of the Atlantic Ocean to make her own sea salt, it prompted Loeffler to study the various kinds and flavors of salt.
Then she began writing about salt and drawing an interest of chef as well as foodies such as the former New York Times food editor Mark Bittman, who edited the essays in the current version of Best American Food Writing. Salt is, according to her, an ordinary mineral, yet it is essential to our lives. It’s in addition a cosmic component that is found in star matter and space.
“I am on this enormous rabbit hole to learn about salt,”” she explained. “How does salt fit into the history of humanity? It is an integral component of human existence and culture and even sexual sex.”
The book will be released on October. 17 but the piece was first published earlier this year in Whetstone magazine.
