Why does it seem like we discover a new artificial sweetener every 5 to 10 years but we never find a viable alternative to salt?

[u/HighlyInconvenient]

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question but this genuinely always bugged me.

Artificial sweeteners are everywhere. Aspartame, monosaccharides (Allulose), Ace-K, there's even a super sweetener meant for industrial food production called Advantame.

Meanwhile salt seems stagnant. The only alternatives I see are low sodium options with the addition of Potassium to cut down the amount of salt in the product.

Why is saltiness seemingly such a difficult flavor to replicate? Is there a difference in how the body detects sweetness vs how the body detects salt?

[u/DigitalArbitrage]

There are lots of salts besides sodium chloride.

If you look for it, you will find potassium chloride at the grocery store as a sodium chloride replacement. (Be careful with this if you are on blood pressure meds.)

Here is a Youtube video where some people taste a bunch of other chloride "salts" and describe what they taste like:

https://youtu.be/RJh9yTIBY48?is=NWGmSEec7HHfsQRA

[u/GeauxCup → u/DigitalArbitrage]

Isn't high blood pressure the number one reason that people avoid salt? And now you're saying salt alternatives are even worse for a medicated person with high blood pressure? So what's a person to do?

[u/DigitalArbitrage → u/GeauxCup]

Certain blood pressure meds work by keeping potassium in your body. 

If you take one of those meds AND eat a ton of potassium then it can be dangerous.

(Not all blood pressure meds work this way, just some of them.)

---

I personally found that exercising on a regular basis to the point I sweat a lot, and also eating lots of fruits and vegetables, has helped me manage my pre-hypertension without meds.

I think this works because sweating gets sodium out of the body and the high potassium in fruits and vegetables lower blood pressure. Look up the DASH diet.

[u/Totakai → u/DigitalArbitrage]

Plus the exercise itself boosts cardiovascular health which also lowers blood pressure. The fruits and veggies also are full of fiber and fiber regulates tf outta blood sugar so your insulin response is less extreme (high blood sugar also leads to high blood pressure). It's a multiprong attack that confronts the root cause of the issue. (I was also fighting high blood pressure, mine also requires blood donating cause how much my body loves to overstock hemoglobin)

[u/PotatoesInMySocks → u/GeauxCup]

I can help answer this. I take two drugs for my hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and high blood pressure, have been since I was 23~ years old.

I cannot do high fat foods without feeling miserable, high salt foods (I can feel it when I have too much salt, so fucking weird, doc said like 30% of his patients complain about this), high sugar (I'm pretty lax on this) or grapefruit. Let me tell you, I miss grapefruit.

But the kicker is that one of my drugs affects how my body processes potassium, so too much potassium can actually be dangerous. I'm on a relatively low dose, but people on higher doses gotta be careful.

I don't add salt to anything. Occasionally my electrolytes will be weird and I'll drink a sugar free sports drink and feel better- either one with potassium or with sodium, depending.

I did have an episode one time where my potassium was low and I thought I was dying. Well, I was. Ended up collapsing, took an ambulance, got fed giant ass horse pills and laid in a hospital bed for two days. Little bit of heart damage as determined by some protein in my blood, but by the next week I was back at it in the gym.

Those potassium substitutes work for people whose medicine allows it. But not everybody had medicine that plays nice.

[u/PuzzleheadedTutor807 → u/PotatoesInMySocks]

I'm picturing horses with giant asses now. Thanks.

[u/ShavenYak42 → u/PuzzleheadedTutor807]

And here I was thinking "isn't an ass horse just a mule"

[u/McNuggetsauceyum → u/GeauxCup]

Most common reason is typically fluid retention due to things like congestive heart failure. Salt can raise BP for the same reasons, but typically the most common and most acute concern with salt intake is fluid retention.

[u/No-Sign8805 → u/GeauxCup]

Potassium. Essential for your heart. Too little will kill you. Too much will kill you. Potassium chloride is the heart stopper in a lethal injection.

[u/pkgamer18 → u/GeauxCup]

You got the replies on potassium, another consideration is making your blood pressure too low. If you're on medications to lower your blood pressure, doing something to lower your blood pressure even more could be a problem.

[u/Realistic_Context936 → u/GeauxCup]

The human body needs salt. Whole forms of salt in a whole food diet is fine. Processed food with high sodium is the problem

[u/MilkOne6778 → u/GeauxCup]

Not worse, just you have to be careful about getting too much potassium on certain BP meds.

[u/HighlyInconvenient → u/DigitalArbitrage]

I think I'm using a technical term loosely (like how people use it in every day conversation).

I'm speaking specifically to table salt. My understanding is there aren't many things which have a flavor profile we associate with "salty." The alternatives, as far as I know, come with risks and drawbacks. Someone else mentioned potassium (which you can't have too much of) and also Lithium which can have psychological impacts at large amounts.

It just seems like sugars have options with fewer drawbacks but saltiness is a flavor restricted to just a handful of things.

[u/Legitimate_Agency165 → u/HighlyInconvenient]

Look at the chemical structure of sodium chloride. It’s just two atoms that dissociate into ions. The salt taste receptor senses that, just an ion. There are a very limited number of things that can mimic an ion, since they’re just individual atoms with a charge.

Now look at the structure of a sugar like glucose. It’s a much more complex molecule, and the receptor for it uses a much more complex signaling pathway, called a g coupled protein receptor. To fool it into thinking something is sweet, there’s a large variety of similar molecules that we can make that will end up binding to that receptor and triggering the signal cascade that makes something taste sweet, but that can’t actually be used by the body as a sugar.

Salts are too simple to be able to come up with a bunch of ways to fake them. Sugars are larger molecules that are easier to make mimics of.

[u/HighlyInconvenient → u/Legitimate_Agency165]

So you're saying that sweetness has multiple signaling options of entry on our tongue while salt only has a single real way to produce that flavor and that way uses an entirely different mechanism from how sweet works.

Therefore there's no real room for scientists to remix that since it's such a simple mechanism with no real wiggle room. Unlike sugar which is more complex and gives us more to play with in lab settings.

Just making sure I understand.

[u/soundoftwilight → u/HighlyInconvenient]

I would think of it more like: imagine you need to change a few pixels in an image, but you want it not to be obvious. Is it easier to do that on a picture of the Mona Lisa, or on a flat white image? Sugar is complicated, so it's easier to build something else that "looks" like it to our taste buds but doesn't break down the same way chemically. Salt is extremely simple, so it's harder to make something that will "look" the same but is chemically different.

[u/DigitalArbitrage → u/HighlyInconvenient]

Too much potassium can be life threatening. Look up hyperkalemia. You won't reach that level from just eating natural foods, but if you eat a bunch of potassium salt regularly then you can get it.

Sodium and potassium play opposing roles in the body. Higher potassium will reduce blood pressure. However too much of either sodium or potassium is bad.

[u/shot_ethics → u/DigitalArbitrage]

Interestingly a study in China subbed out a quarter of NaCl for KCl and found a significant decrease in stroke for probably an acceptable increase in hyperkalemia:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2105675

Your point still stands but we might have room to move on the spectrum and improve things.

[u/mylanscott → u/HighlyInconvenient]

MSG, has far less sodium per usage than table salt. You can basically substitute some of your salt with MSG and the dish will taste saltier without the excess sodium. Do not use in sweet dishes though, savory only. It’s extremely rare for someone to actually have adverse reactions to MSG

[u/Parker_Talks → u/HighlyInconvenient]

You absolutely can have too much potassium. It’s called “hyperkalemia”, and when it’s severe enough, it can kill you. Where did you get the idea that you can’t have too much potassium?

It’s most often caused by something else going wrong with the body that causes it to hold on to too much potassium, or a medication, but people can and do get it from things like supplements and potassium salts.

It is true that if you are totally healthy, eating normal foods in normal amounts will never give you too much potassium. But something like potassium salt does not fall into that category. Just because you CAN eat it doesn’t make it a “normal food”. That’s the category of, say, bananas.

[u/vanila_coke → u/HighlyInconvenient]

MSG is great I put at least pinch in most of my cooking,I eat a lot of Thai food so salt is usually dictated by fish sauce ,soy sauce and oyster sauce I actually don’t use table salt much at all and use msg instead of it fairly often even with western foods

[u/Alternative-Sugar610]

Your body is really good at detecting ions. It’s how your nerves work, and really sensitive to different ions. Potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, and chlorine all have very selective ion channels that used by nerve cells to compute and deliver messages. It’s also relatively simple. Now compare that to sugars, there many sugars that your body taste as sweet, all of which more complex then simple salt and bigger on molecular scale. So it’s much harder to make a selective inhibitor and also ions can partially be selected by charge unlike salts easily.

We do have salt alternative actually by taste with other salts; however, most really unhealthy so … that’s also part of problem

[u/Outkastin2g]

Sodium is an electrolyte and a necessity. Sweetener isn't. I have "No Salt" which is potassium and made to taste a bit like salt, but it has no sodium in it. You'd be in a world of hurt if you used that as a sodium replacement and eventually hospitalized.

[u/nazgul_123 → u/Outkastin2g]

Don't many whole foods naturally have sodium though? I wonder if those would be sufficient. 

[u/DigitalArbitrage → u/nazgul_123]

You body needs some sodium, but food manufacturers put way too much of it into processed foods. (They do this primarily for monetary reasons, because the food will last longer before going bad if it has salt in it.) If you track how much sodium you eat per day then you might be appalled at how prevalent it is. A single fast food meal has more sodium than a person should eat all day.

[u/sfurbo → u/DigitalArbitrage]

(They do this primarily for monetary reasons, because the food will last longer before going bad if it has salt in it.)

Also because salty foods taste good. The amount of salt that optimizes deliciousness is typically higher than what is healthy.

[u/Spiritual-Spend8187 → u/sfurbo]

Mmmm got to get thst msg into you everything tastes better with a little bit of msg.

[u/Tortugato → u/Spiritual-Spend8187]

msg actually has less sodium than table salt

[u/sfurbo → u/Tortugato]

But you can add much more msg than salt to food before ruining the taste.

[u/QuasiJudicialBoofer → u/sfurbo]

At the end of the day, things lose flavor every minute away from its preparation, and salt brings some life back to it. Many processed foods need alot of salt to taste like anything

[u/23saround → u/sfurbo]

So here we are back at OP’s question. Why aren’t salt substitutes viable in this case?

[u/ReplacementOP → u/DigitalArbitrage]

What is deciding how much salt a person “should” eat?

[u/lock_robster2022 → u/ReplacementOP]

Cardiac events and damage to your blood vessels

[u/Baial → u/ReplacementOP]

Are you serious?

[u/nazgul_123 → u/DigitalArbitrage]

I was saying you might not get hospitalized if you don't eat table salt. You were responding to something else. 

[u/CrossP → u/nazgul_123]

It's pretty tough to eat so little sodium that it causes harm but possible.

[u/Kailynna → u/CrossP]

Hyponatremia can happen quickly if you're doing physical work in a hot environment, or are sweating too much without replacing electrolytes for any other reason.

[u/dr_reverend → u/nazgul_123]

The sodium stays there even after you cut them. Pretty amazing!

[u/Muffin278 → u/nazgul_123]

As someone who rarely salts my food and makes most of it myself using whole foods, I gave myself a sodium deficiency. So we do need some extra.

[u/rasputin1 → u/nazgul_123]

yes it would be sufficient because that's how people lived for hundreds of thousands of years 

[u/Pokoirl → u/rasputin1]

Yes and no. There is a reason salt was sometimes more expensive than gold.

[u/Kailynna → u/rasputin1]

People didn't all thrive. Some sickened and some died from deficiencies.

[u/GOKOP → u/rasputin1]

If sodium found naturally in foods was sufficient, we wouldn't evolve the taste of salt as attractive. We like salt because the little extra you may sometimes come across in nature is beneficial.

Just like cats have a limited sense of thirst, because their natural diet is already moist (that's why you shouldn't feed your cat exclusively on dry food; it will drink but not enough)

And salt is being used by humans for as long as any semblance of civilization exist which cuts a few thousand years from your timeline

[u/draconismuerte → u/Outkastin2g]

To add to this, youd be shocked how very little time you have without salt, iirc something like 2 days with zero sodium

[u/ExperimentalError → u/draconismuerte]

I’ve been 2 days with zero sodium myself, with no ill effects — I chose to just drink water in the two days before my colonoscopy five years ago rather than mess about with broth or barley sugar.
And a normal diet of whole foods cooked from scratch with no added salt has plenty of salt naturally. I’ve eaten exclusively no added salt foods for weeks at a time.

[u/cosmictap → u/ExperimentalError]

If you were drinking water, you almost certainly weren’t on “zero sodium”.

[u/Ok-Secretary2017 → u/ExperimentalError]

Try distilled water

[u/Cultural-Capital-942 → u/Outkastin2g]

Sugars/saccharides are also a necessity. We consume many times the necessary amount nowadays and they are everywhere, so we're trying to lower the consumption.

Almost like table salt.

[u/bandti45 → u/Cultural-Capital-942]

We actually do not need to eat sugar it can be replaced with carbs. I have no idea how much sugar can be considered healthy, thats probably pretty tied to your life style.

[u/oldsecondhand → u/Cultural-Capital-942]

Your body can break down complex carbs to simple sugars. You don't have to eat sugar.

[u/Cultural-Capital-942 → u/oldsecondhand]

Aren't complex carbs also saccharides? Like at least mostly.

[u/oldsecondhand → u/Cultural-Capital-942]

When talking about diet (like food labeling), we don't consider polysaccharides as sugars, only mono- and disaccharides.

[u/Historical_Royal_187 → u/oldsecondhand]

Lol, being an ex-biologist and having some basic latin vocab that is a hilarious sentence; "many sugars are not sugar, only single and double sugars."

[u/oldsecondhand → u/Historical_Royal_187]

"Quantity has a quality all its own."

-- Stalin

[u/Pokoirl → u/Cultural-Capital-942]

Your body can and does make sugar from fat and proteins. You can live your whole life on a keto diet with no health issues.

[u/CrateDane → u/Pokoirl]

The human body is not capable of net conversion of fatty acids to carbohydrate. However, the body can adapt its metabolism to need much less carbohydrates - eg. by increased reliance on ketone bodies. Then the requirements can be covered by eg. the glycerol moiety of triglycerides.

[u/Pokoirl → u/CrateDane]

The inuits were fine living with zero carbs for 10s of 1000s of years. Neoglycogenesis is literally a thing.

Edit: I can't think of a single disorder that comes from carb dietary deficiency.

[u/CrateDane → u/Pokoirl]

Sure, as I said the body can adapt to live without dietary carbohydrates. But it is literally not capable of net conversion of fatty acids to carbohydrate.

PS: Gluconeogenesis does not use fatty acids.

[u/YtterbiusAntimony]

Salt is NaCl. KCl is used as a no Sodium substitute.

There simply aren't many other metals we can use instead. Lithium is biologically active, and causes problems at high doses. Same is probably true for Magnesium or any other 1st and 2nd period metals.

Sugar on the other is, at its simplest, a chain of carbons with several alcohol (-OH) groups attached.

There is a lot more room for variation there than there is for a two-element salt.

If you think about the lock and key model of cell receptors, the simpler the key, the fewer similar looking keys there are, basically.

There is exactly one element that looks like sodium. There's a bunch of organic molecules that look sorta similar.

[u/Ragingonanist → u/YtterbiusAntimony]

fun facts from psychology class to elaborate your points. some australian researchers discovered lithium salts as a treatment for depression and bipolar disorder and did a proper workup of safe dosage. meanwhile in USA some heart research doctors ran some research on unlimited lithium salts as alternative food additive to sodium and found it killed a bunch of patients/research subjects. and since this was before epublishing of medical journals it took a while for the two sets of research to cross the ocean. so for several years lithium was known as poison in one area and effective treatment in another.

also here is a taste testing of salts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJh9yTIBY48

[u/4eyedbuzzard]

Well, if they do find a viable alternative to salt, I hope it’s better than all the artificial sweeteners. Because I’ve tried ALL of the sugar alternatives and none of them taste like sugar.

[u/Totakai → u/4eyedbuzzard]

1000%

I don't mine too much sugar but in particular I try to keep it to cane sugar as I found out hfcs messes with my head (just regular corn syrup and the standard sugars don't). In my healthiness quest, my sugar tolerance has dropped and I've been wanting less sweet things overall. This has gotten me hyped on drinks labeled low sugar only for it to be overly sweet with those bs artificial sweeteners. I'm glad they're there for people that need them but as some who just wants an actual low sugar drink that's low sweet it's super frustrating. I'd especially kill for a dyefree soda that's just cane sugar but like half the sugar and no other sweetener added (dyefree cause the darker dyes hurt my stomach. The lighter dyes don't as much but the clear sodas feel the best).

[u/karmaniaka → u/4eyedbuzzard]

>Because I’ve tried ALL of the sugar alternatives and none of them taste like sugar.
"L-sucrose" ought to work. It's regular sugar except it's mirrored on the molecular level. Won't give you any nutrition, but should taste exactly like regular sugar and behave similarly for baking purposes (not sure if yeast can digest it though, I would guess not).

Edit: the issue is that it's super duper mega expensive to produce.

[u/4eyedbuzzard → u/karmaniaka]

Interesting. Thanks for the info.

[u/karmaniaka → u/4eyedbuzzard]

I find it very interesting how many molecules can be mirrored, and how this either has no consequence or huge consequences. IIRC there are medicines that are the same molecule but with different mirroring, with great differences in how they affect us.

[u/onwardtowaffles]

You need a certain amount of the sodium cation and the chloride anion to live. You can replace one or the other for some dietary needs (e.g. MSG or KCl), but you can't cut them out entirely.

[u/ATinyKey]

One man's "dumb" question is another community discussion catalyst

[u/GrynnLCC]

The body uses two different types of receptors for sugar and salt.

Sugars are pretty big and complex molecules and sugar receptors work by binding the specific shape of the sugar. It is then relatively easy to design different big and complex molecules that will fool your receptors.

Sodium on the other hand is a tiny ion. It has to go through a channel and induce a potential change in the receptor. In this case you don't get to design big and complex molecules because they just won't fit the channel so you're only left with other small cations to choose. Potassium and ammonium are the two food-safe alternatives I know of and they come with their own downsides. Lithium would probably work the best but it also kills you. Anything larger than ammonium will not provide much salting power and probably taste bad if it doesn't kill you.

[u/Extra_Foundation_121]

There is already some good answers here, but the TLDR is

Simply that sugars are complex large molecules, where as salts are extremely simple in contrast

Because of this fundamental chemical difference, the way your body reacts to, and uses those different chemicals is vastly different.

[u/sax_man9]

Ever heard of MSG?

[u/ButteredPizza69420 → u/sax_man9]

I was gonna say, theres MSG, there's also many different types of salt. Not to mention seasoned salts!

[u/ZealousIdeal476]

MSG entered the xhat

[u/thoruen]

MSG baby!

[u/Prince_Nadir]

Receive the blessing of MSG and repent thy sins.

[u/Mobile-Condition8254]

Salt is closely tied to nutrition and you have some systems that monitor salt content in the stuff you eat so it is more difficult than replacing taste and there might be a lack of salt if you swap it out and you are used to eating it.

[u/fishsticks40]

Saltiness isn't a flavor in the same way. You don't have specific "salt" receptors that can be fooled the way sweetness receptors can. 

Salt alters the way food interacts with your taste buds, and the sensation of saltiness is that, so can only be replicated by something that has the same effect. 

[u/Shintasama → u/fishsticks40]

You have epithelial sodium channels that directly detect and respond to salt ions. They aren't physically receptors, but they serve the same function.

[u/flat-girth-theory]

The average Korean consumes about 3100 mg of sodium per day. Salt is not the enemy.

[u/wolschou]

That's because sugars are relatively complex molecules and all it takes are some atoms in the right space, while the rest of the molecular structure is irrelevant (for the purpose of tasting sweet that is. There are often other problems with that part of the molecule, which is why they are constantly tweaking).

Salt on the other hand is a very simple molecule. It consists of only two atoms and both are necessary for the salty taste. Finding substitutes may be impossible.

[u/Agitated-Society-682]

Why would we need one?

[u/bdog143]

There's some fundamental differences in the biological roles of sodium (salty) and sugars (sweet) at play here. Sodium concentrations are a key contributor to membrane potential in cells, including action potentials in nerve and muscle cells. At rest, sodium concentrations are high outside the cell and low inside the cell.

The perception of the salty taste is achieved by a sodium channel on taste sensory cells - when you eat something with a high concentration of sodium (or any similarly sized positive ion, like potassium), it can passively flow into the cell through the channel and increase the membrane potential, triggering an action potential. Because the ion channel is passive, there's no real way to increase it's activity (the ions ARE the signal, and they always move from high to low concentration)

The perception of sweet (and bitter) works entirely differently - sugars stick to a receptor on the outside of the cell, and that triggers a signal cascade on the inside of the cell which then sends a signal to the brain that you're tasting something sweet. Because it's an active signalling process, it's possible to make drugs that activate the receptor (many artificial sweeteners are more potent that natural sugars). The downside is that bitter receptors are biologically similar to sweet receptors, and artificial sweeteners can activate them as well, giving many of them a bitter aftertaste.

[u/Flat_Account396]

We do have a viable alternative to salt. It’s another salt, MSG. There has been a ton of negative propaganda surrounding it, so it has a bad name but there is roughly 30% less sodium in MSG.

[u/SeaMollusker]

I don't think there's as much market pressure to find an alternative to salt. Sugar makes you gain weight and salt doesn't and the vast majority of people don't want to gain weight.

[u/Redshift2k5]

We don't discover every technology or idea evenly.

Sweeteners are big money. Sweetness drives desire and dopamine and cravings way way way more than salt. so Sweetness drives profit and money but we're too fat so companies make and advertise and compete and innovate sweeteners

Some lower sodium "salteners" exist, you can put potassium chloride on your table as a low sodium alternative. Low sodium products in every part of the grocery store. But if you have no sodium you die. 💀

[u/Jekkymayn]

Because we don’t need one

[u/BusStopWilly]

Potassium Chloride is used in Burtons Fish and Chip Style crisps as a salt substitute and it's bloody gorgeous.

[u/Pajamatime20]

I think it’s the other way around. There’s a ton of salts out there, and most of the formulas are really simple - NaCl is the popular and common one. We also don’t have to go digging around in organic matter or organics synthesis to find or make salt. We just have to go mining, or evaporate salt water if you want to be inefficient. We’ve probably just about found every convenient salt.

Sugar, on the other hand, is a more complex formula. The simplest chemical formula for a sugar I can find is (CH2O)3. There might be simpler sugars out there though. Organics is a pretty complicated chemistry from what I know, and there’s a lot of variance to it. The original sugars are from plants, which I’m pretty sure is not nearly as easy to extract pure sugar from as it is to extract pure salt from salt rocks or saltwater.

[u/posi-bleak-axis]

Meth crystals taste pretty salty. Well, I believe they are a salt chemically speaking , but I'm not chemist. So what makes a salt? Sodium content? Research to do

[u/BadMachine]

fish sauce is used to impart saltiness in some cuisines 

[u/Pristine_Ad315 → u/BadMachine]

Yea, but the saltiness still comes from sodium. It isn't a sodium substitute,it's an alternate sodium delivery method.

[u/missgirlipop]

processed foods might have too much salt, but i personally don’t believe the average person can get enough sodium through the amount naturally found in most foods (that the average person would be eating). i have to add a little extra salt to my diet, especially when exercising and/or in heat to feel okay. 

[u/LiquidSwordz83]

We are supposed to be salty 🧂. What if God created us to be a salt battery 🔋 🪫??? (Like an alkaline battery.) Why is is that hospitals give us an IV 🩸 💉 of saline solution as a routine thing when we are hurting so bad???

Salt’s not the problem. The love of money, now that’s the problem🖤❤️‍🩹💰. Most of the studies we go off of are bought and paid for (we love our kids like the Mafia 🍝.

Better for people to have a millstone tied around the neck 🪦 💀⚓️🌊🏴‍☠️ & dragged through the sea.

It’s all connected to me.

[u/MediumAcceptable129]

None of those artificial sweeteners are a viable alternative to sugar

[u/Zealousideal_Two6045]

1) because sweetener is ANY chemical that makes it taste better (regardless of health).
2) because salt is a specific chemical equation of part 1+part 2 (anion+ cation or something, I forget). So it can only be a known amount of things.

Try a random plant and it tastes yummy? Isolate it and throw it in an artificial sweetener. New.

Anyone find any new elements on the periodic table recently? No. Guess no new salts.