Salty and sweet for Obama

President-elect Barack Obama likes salt ... on caramel, at least. So reports the NY Times in a December 31 story "How Caramel Developed a Taste For Salt." Food technologists readily understand how salt makes sweet sweeter by masking bitterness, but the traditional Breton confection of heavily-salted butter caramels has now "made its successful run from rarefied Parisian pastry shops to American big-box stores in a decade -- a relatively short period, according to people who study food trends."

Obama becomes the first US president since Ronald Reagan to profess preference for adding salt to foods. Reagan famously observed that "only a raccoon could eat a (hard-boiled) egg without salt." George H.W. Bush missed the point entirely bad-mouthing broccoli when all he'd have needed to do was add some salt to mask its bitterness. Go figure.

If the Reagan Oval Office offered visitors jelly bellies, perhaps President Obama will be offering salt-sprinkled caramels.