There was an interesting article in Food Navigator today entitled, "Salty smells will aid industry in sodium reduction efforts." http://bit.ly/Qx2SQM It is an interesting idea that should be easy enough to test. If salty aroma actually reduced the need for salt in foods, then the sales of low-salt foods should be higher in seaside or fishing communities then in the rest of the country. Is that actually the case?
There are very few researchers that have studied this, but the one study that stands out was by Lillian Gleibermann in 1973: "Blood pressure and dietary salt in human populations," Ecology of Food and Nutrition, 2:2, 143-156. She found the opposite results - that communities that lived in close proximity to the sea and its salty smells actually ate the most salt. Countries like Japan and Taiwan or island communities such as Raratonga or the Caribbean ranked highest in the results.
When it comes to salt, however, actual evidence never stopped the anti-salt gang from following a red herring.
