From Peter Urben
Reviewing the book Taste What You’re Missing, Catherine de Lange raises the question of why we do not crave salt as we do the equally essential water (24 March, p 54). But I do crave it, in exactly the same way; in fact, my cravings make no distinction.
When I go for a long walk on a hot day, the result is, not surprisingly, a salt-encrusted brow and a chronic thirst which persists for several days – long after I am rehydrated – unless I drink lightly salted water to stop the craving.
I conclude that my remote forebears evolved in an environment of brackish water.
Kenilworth, Warwickshire, UK
