Why Is There So Much Salt in Processed Food?

Updated July 2026

Every year, food manufacturers pour roughly 5 billion pounds of salt into the food supply. That's the real reason the average American takes in about 3,400 mg of sodium a day, well above the recommended limit, with something like 70% of it coming from processed and restaurant food rather than the salt shaker.

So the obvious question is: why do manufacturers add so much in the first place? It comes down to three things, and none of them is your health.

Reason 1: Salt is the cheapest ingredient available.

Salt is a cheap filler, plain and simple. When we first began developing Step One, we sat down with a food-industry expert who told us the single best trick for controlling ingredient costs was to add lots of salt. It bulks up products and stretches expensive ingredients for next to nothing. That's a big part of why a packet of ordinary instant oatmeal can carry nearly 300 mg of sodium while plain oats have essentially none. The salt isn't there for you. It's there for the margin.

Reason 2: Salt masks the taste of everything else.

Adding a pinch of salt to enhance a home-cooked dish is one thing. Masking is something else entirely. Many processed foods are built from chemicals and additives that don't taste good on their own, or in combination, and salt is used to cover up those objectionable flavors so you never notice them. As investigative reporter Michael Moss put it in his book Salt Sugar Fat, salt is "the great fixer": without it, he notes, cornflakes taste metallic, crackers turn bitter and soggy, and ham can go so rubbery it practically bounces. Herbs and spices can enhance and mask flavor too, but they cost far more than salt, so salt wins. At Step One we don't need to mask anything, because we don't use the chemicals and additives that need hiding in the first place.

Reason 3: Salt keeps you coming back.

Like sugar and fat, salt travels the same brain pathways as other addictive substances, lighting up the pleasure centers and driving you to crave more. That's why you finish the whole bag of chips even after telling yourself to stop. And here's the striking part: we aren't born this way. Babies actually start life with an aversion to salt and only acquire the taste once they begin eating salted food. For manufacturers, that acquired craving is a sales engine, because a product you're hooked on is a product you buy again and again.

The good news: you can retrain your palate.

A salt habit can be broken. By easing back on sodium a little at a time, most people reset their taste for salt within two to three months, at which point heavily salted food actually starts to taste too salty. For those of you who enjoy salted nuts, like many of my patients do, I suggest you mix them half and half with unsalted versions. The concentrated salt “hit” is still there, but you've cut the sodium load in half. Slowly reduce the proportion of salted nuts further over time and you might just get to a point where you're starting to appreciate – and crave - the flavor of the nut itself. So long salt!

Your palate is far more adaptable than the food industry would like you to believe. The practical playbook for doing it is in how to cut back on salt without hating your food, and for the bigger picture on where all that hidden sodium is coming from, see where the sodium in your diet actually comes from.

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