How many holes in your salt shaker?

Martina alerted me to a story about salt shakers. I remember back as a student in the nineteenth century learning that you can reduce the amount of salt people use by putting less holes in the top of the salt shaker because people shook based on time not on the amount of salt that came out of the shaker.

A recent project by Gateshead Council in England compared standard shakers with 17 holes to a new version with only 5 holes and found that this strategy cut salt used by around 60%. This could be a useful public health program if you can get the big fast food franchises to come on board and modify their salt shakers. You can find the story here: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23433670-council-orders-fish-and-chip-shops-to-put-fewer-holes-in-salt-shakers-in-new-health-drive.do

More detail on the actual study can found here: http://www.foodvision.gov.uk/pages/gateshead-salt-shaker-study

Now if they could just design salt shakers so teenagers couldn’t open them, we would have a lot less salt being adding to sugar dispensers in restaurants. Well, I stopped doing that when I turned 20 anyway.