About the amount of salt in foods?

[ThoseWeirdStones]

Especially some 'fresh foods'.

I started cooking more from scratch a few years ago but still enjoy the odd fresh meal from a supermarket like the non meat pizza, etc. No crazy ingredients, and tasty.

I didn't buy any for a while and recently had an old favourite, what I always thought was the best on the market, and it was so bloody salty. It was like eating a brick covered in salt. The recipe hasn't changed and it looked the same, so I am thinking my surprise was due to not having had it in a while, so my tolerance for salt had reduced.

DH said it's likely there as a preservative, as even though it's 'fresh' and mostly whole ingredients, something has to keep it shelf stable for a few days.

Is this correct? Surely so much salt can't ne for taste alone?
I am utterly shit with food science so don't have a clue. Why would a good quality pizza with fresh ingredients have to contain so much salt?

Your not wrong op. I used to enjoy dominos pizza. Now I cook from scratch including pizzas and I didn't have a dominos for maybe a year. Then I had one and could not believe how salty I found it. I have not noticed this in other foods but I think you have a point

It's not used as a preservative, you would need a huge amount done that to work. Foods like bacon or smoked salmon contain large amounts of salt to act as a preservative,oat do not.

A certain amount of salt is a flavour enhancer. It can totally change the taste of food. There is a reason why chefs use so much in cooking.

You’d be surprised at what store bought products that advertise as “100% natural ingredients” are full of shit.

I work for a company that produces M&S food products, they have a very strict “Only natural ingredients” policy, if you think that is adhered to, you’re an idiot. Even products that say nut/seed free aren’t nut/seed free, same goes go vegan products. And before you go off at M&S about this, they have no idea about their product quality violations because everything is made by a different company and hidden/covered up before they do an audit. The only mistake M&S make is telling companies when they’re going to do an audit instead of just turning up, they literally give us a warning to do things by the book.

Sounds like a mess.

I am intrigued as to why they'd use it as a flavour enhancer when it fairly ruins it. I can accept it in soups, etc, but there's still far too much. If anything it takes over the flavours and dulls them.
The pizza I mention is the fresh one from the co op, it is (or I used to think) quite delicious, and not too bad ingredients wise. A nice treat. But recently the salt content overpowers the lovely tastes of the tomato and cheese, and renders the other ingredients invisible.

In a lot of ultra-processed foods there are often bitter tasting additives and/or little natural nice tasting ingredients. So they put loads of salt in to make it palatable because it is cheap and works.