Salt Intake

Issue No. 6: Food, Nutrition, and Access in Our Communities
Words - Tash Moore

I have low blood pressure. When standing quickly, my head might sway or swim, but I won’t faint. I gaze at my fist from time to time and remember that if I close it and open it steadily that my heart is beating at the same rate. This stands in sharp contrast to my twin sister who has had to have her heart and brain waves monitored throughout our lives. I don’t like fists much, though I’ll catch myself making them reflexively. Even threateningly. Mimicking for myself the promise of violence if I ask for too many sweets at the wrong time. So salt, with its indescribable tang, became as accessible as conversation wasn’t. I can eat bags upon full sized bags of potato chips and not gain weight.

There were no obvious outward consequences for making salt an emotional centerpiece, but the rhythmic crunching wasn’t a fine replacement for sharing words or thoughts. Sour cream and onion Better Made chips, twenty-five cent bags of Cheetos at Piper’s Corner Store, much later Jay’s in all sorts of varieties, and if we were at my grandparents’ homes, Lays. I remember being scolded at my dad’s parents: Why are you asking for food? If it’s in the refrigerator, just go get it; it’s yours. They didn’t know that at home I was required to ask for milk for my cereal, every morning, without fail, though not the cereal itself. That a dear family member recovering from drug use would eat any and every sweet thing in the house. Even our pudding cups. Once, they picked all of the green Fruit Loops out of the box and left them on the counter top. Because they didn’t like the lime flavored newness. So, I ate what remained and what didn’t put me into proximity for a beating. And that was usually savory.

My sister and I have developed into two distinct persons. She loves candy, and I worry about her heart. I am concerned about diabetes, and the way heart disease is carried differently in Black women. We live with stressor upon stressor, mental and emotional whippings, thick, delicious pork dinners and round-robin insults veiled as taking an interest in their target’s well-being. That’s just any family dinner. Nothing special here. Her ankles aren’t swollen yet, thankfully. I miss eating like the folks I love back home. Now, I choose cauliflower and raw vegetables, and though when under stress, I still eat potato chips. I’ve spaced it out with chickpeas, with kale, and with veggie patties. I even appreciate food that’s largely unseasoned, stuffing only quinoa into fresh peppers or portobello mushroom caps. I am learning to eat to live and to let my fists fall. The salt is often pink these days. The pepper white. And I converse with joy about so much more than food. But, I miss the badness. Not the fear. Just the reliability. And it’s okay to let the badness go too with change. I’ve learned to like and love the newness. I’ve learned to stop picking it out of what I have now.