If you leave out the salt ...

... you will probably add too much sweetener.

The odd thing about human taste is that if the salt is left out, the mouth will read it as needing sweetener. I've found this happens when I accidentally forget to add salt to my oatmeal. It's like I just can't get enough salt in the dish to make it taste good.

Consumption of sugar has mushroomed: in the last 20 years, we've gone from consuming 26 pounds of sugar per person per year to consuming on average 135 pounds per year.

Which means the average American is eating 2-3 pounds of sugar per week.

Envision that with me: think about the 5 pound bag of sugar you buy in the store, and realize that -- if you are the average person -- you're going through a bag like that every 2 weeks.

Sugar is not good for you. This is well-known, well-documented, and not really open to question. So why has our sugar consumption gone up so dramatically?

I wonder if it's not because of the no-salt obsession that's gone on for the last 20 years. Without salt, you have millions of people reading that off taste as a need for more sugar. It wouldn't be the only reason, but I suspect this plays a greater role than we've imagined.