Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, January 28, 2004
FAIRYTALE WITH A TANGY ENDING
ONCE upon a time, there was a glistening white mountain rising above a tropical island and visitors wondered how snow could exist in such a warm climate. Even more mysteriously, the island's food tasted better than anywhere else on earth. And that, to the best of my recollection, formed the basis of a fairytale that was included in school project material sent to me as a kid by the salt industry. Yes, a mountain of salt. What the fairytale failed to mention was everyone in the tropical paradise had hardened arteries and high blood pressure from adding salt to everything they ate. The salt mountain has remained in my memory for more than 40 years, which proves the insidious influence of well-aimed propaganda on young minds - in this case brainwashed in brine. Used in olden times to preserve food or to disguise its bad taste, salt was once worth its weight in gold. A few years later, when I was at school, salt tablets were handed out freely at athletic carnivals. Now it comes in sports drinks, the colour of petrol or kerosene. The fact is we cannot live without salt. Nor can we go without water. If evolution made any sense, we should be able to drink seawater. The way things are heading, we soon will be. Adelaide will not always have enough natural drinking water and the alternatives will include recycled effluent or, my preference, a desalination plant on the Port River. We spend a fortune on water filtration systems that are designed to remove salt from household water. At some point a desalination plant will become economically viable - if not already. Israel has long operated desalination plants along its Mediterranean coast. The latest, a $250 million project, is expected to produce water for the next 25 years at around 50 cents a litre. Compare that to a supermarket cask of springwater, which costs about 40 cents a litre in Adelaide. Creeping salinity is also a curse across significant areas of the State. Worryingly, it even affects some of our premier wine regions. A friend who has a much better palate than mine says he can taste salt in certain wines produced in the northern Clare Valley. He also knows of a consignment of South Australian wine that was rejected by the European Community for having a salt content above acceptable limits. Given the salinity problem and the health warnings, I never add salt to my own cooking - except for a necessary sprinkle on tomatoes or eggs - and have become highly sensitized to salt in the food prepared by others. A marinara pizza tastes like a salt lick. Negligible salt, I don't smoke, have just the one breakfast cup of coffee and drink alcohol in fits and starts. By rights, I should live happily ever after. And I believe in fairytales.
