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Saltier tasting salt is likely counterproductive, IMO. People aren't born knowing how much salt taste corresponds to how much salt consumption, so that gets tuned by persistent salt deficits causing upregulation of salty food desire. In other words, homeostatic feedback causes salt consumption to stay about the same by increased consumption of salty-tasting processed food.

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While I was growing up, my family put so much salt on everything, even before tasting it. About once a month during the summer months my folks would surprise us by picking up pizza (with 8 growing kids, it was a lot of pizza). The top would be flopped open on the boxes, and then mom would start shaking the salt, and shaking, and shaking, and wouldn't stop until you could see a layer. We were all so used it that non-salty pizza was drab, just as you state.

I finally kicked the habit when I went to college. There were no salt shakers out on the tables. After the first semester I went home and nearly choked on the level of salt on the food.

> In other words, homeostatic feedback causes salt consumption to stay about the same by increased consumption of salty-tasting processed food.

I'd imagine that McDonalds/Wendys/etc don't view that as a bad thing...

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