Is salt a seasoning or a mineral?

Don’t laugh. I know you are confused, but hear me out. It is a given.

The salt you receive on your food? It’s on everything, in everything. If every seasoning exists with salt, why would salt be its own seasoning? Is it fundamental for every other seasoning? Exactly. There, the case was made. The end.

Oh wait, you want proof, and reasons and all that jazz. Okay, I get it. You don’t want to take my word for it. Well, here you go.

My number one main point for the reason salt is not a seasoning but a mineral; According to Health Line, in an article titled “Types of Taste: What to Know About Your Sense of Taste”, we are given straight facts. “We have receptors for five kinds of tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, savory.” This tells us all we need to know.

Sugar isn’t considered a seasoning although it’s in many seasoning packets we use. Sour is additionally a distinct taste, but do we say gummy bears are seasoned with sour when they are sour gummy bears? No. We do not. Therefore, having a distinct taste bud for salt means seasoning with salt is also not a thing. Process of elimination there.

On the Food Channel website, in an article titled “Salt is Not a Spice” we get a similar argument to mine. The authors of the article, known as chefs, state that salt is not a spice, it is “technically a mineral; check the periodic table.”

Additionally, a great point was brought up: Pepper.

Salt and pepper are seen as two peas in a pod, one with the other, the holy grail and staple centerpieces for any traditional American dining table- “Black pepper is actually the small dried fruits and seeds of a tropical vine.” How’s that to blow your mind?

Salt is essential to preserving meats, making raw foods safe to consume, to adding flavor and minerals to our diet.

Sodium, often seen as salt, is essential to our diet and needed, but salt is so popular and in everything. Literally everything. To the point where it’s too much. Too much sodium is bad, and therefore we as a culture need to reduce the amount of salt in our food; Salt that is made into our commonly served, processed, daily foods.

And that right there is reason enough to state that salt is not a seasoning, or spice or herb, or any other term such as that. A thing such as salt is a given ingredient to most of our meals, and therefore not an addition to add flavor, but a vital ingredient in the making of said food.

So next time you go to Iberville Dining Hall and see those delicious, unsalted potato wedges or sweet potato waffle fries, you better raise ruckus and demand that salt be added.

And if there is not enough, you will find yourself a nice cozy table with the two necessities: one a combination of dried spices and herbs called pepper and one a crushed up, processed and portioned rock mineral called salt.

Be grateful for the mineral we call salt, which is definitely not a seasoning in any way.