Why We Always Put Salt And Pepper On Our Dining Table

The table salt

An essential mineral for our health is sodium. We take it in the form of sodium chloride, i.e., table salt, with our food.

Without salt, the water balance of our body would not function. The tissue tension would also decrease dramatically without a sufficient supply of salt. This would result in flabby skin, varicose veins, and organ subsidence, such as uterine displacement.

Salt is also indispensable for the transmission of information between nerve cells and is involved in numerous vital metabolic processes.

Today we are oversupplied with salt because it is present in excessive quantities in all processed foods. According to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine , 99.2% of the world's population today consumes salt in quantities that are hazardous to health.

This oversupply leads to severe cardiovascular diseases and shortens life, sometimes considerably.

Against this background, it seems incomprehensible at first sight that salt is so ubiquitous and indispensable for people today.

But this was not always the case. After people settled down around 11,000 B.C., they quickly got problems due to salt deficiency. They, therefore, began to develop techniques to extract salt.

It is unclear how people knew that salt was vital to them, but that is another matter. The fact is that salt has now become so precious that every effort was made to extract it.

Also, it has been known since the Neolithic Age that salt makes food, especially meat, last longer.

The long shelf life of food later became increasingly important in the military sector to secure supplies and in the conquest of the world's oceans and the great voyages of discovery.

Salt has, therefore, been associated with prosperity throughout history. Because salt played such an important role in people's everyday lives for thousands of years, it became by itself the ubiquitous seasoning that it still is today.

The salt shaker on every kitchen table is, therefore, the end of a long, historical development.

The pepper

The fact that pepper, at least in the western world, is now the second indispensable spice after salt is due to our collective history.

All Western societies, including the USA, are influenced by the Roman Empire. Roman law, for example, is the foundation of all Western legal systems.

Because Rome dominated the entire European area in its heyday, it was a cultural influence for all ancestors of today's Western societies.

What does this have to do with pepper? Quite simply - the Romans were absolutely crazy about pepper. They hadn't discovered pepper (the Greeks were already using it in the time of Alexander the Great), but they were the first to buy it in bulk.

The Indian farmers who cultivated pepper could hardly believe that the Romans were willing to give you gold for pepper. For the Romans, however, pepper was an absolute luxury good because of its rarity at that time and its pleasant taste.

Pepper became a real whim of the Romans. They even sprinkled pepper on their desserts.

Now that the Romans were prepared to pay almost any price for pepper, the spice quickly became a sought-after international commodity. Everyone suddenly wanted pepper, and eventually, even wars were fought over it.

An interesting side effect of the general greed for pepper was the discovery of America. Portugal, which was heavily disadvantaged in the world trade in pepper because of its geographical location, no longer wanted to pay the high customs duties for the commodity.

Portugal had to find a western route to India so that it could import pepper itself without having to travel through foreign customs areas. So Christopher Columbus was granted the financing of an expedition. He had promised to find the much needed Western Passage.

The outcome of this journey is well known. He searched for pepper and found a new world.

So even the pepper only made it onto each of our tables, because there have been some random developments in history, which could have taken a completely different course.

Even more than salt, the omnipresence of pepper in our current diet can be explained by cultural history.

If the Romans had instead had an inexplicable preference for chili, our cuisine today would perhaps resemble Asian cuisine.

Conclusion

The little things in our everyday life often seem to us to be taken for granted. Hardly anyone questions such ordinary things as the salt shaker and the pepper shaker on the table in the restaurant.

But as soon as we ask such questions and follow them up, we dive deep into our history and discover connections that are as fascinating as they are curious.

It is worth taking a closer look every now and then. Especially with the things we consider natural, this can lead to unexpected new insights and change our view of the world and our everyday life.