My husband and I were eating in a restaurant the other night when he raised the saltshaker and proclaimed, “Now, there’s some salty salt.” Too often, he insisted, restaurant salt just didn’t taste as salty as it should. He wanted me to be alarmed at the prospect of unscrupulous restaurateurs slipping salt substitute past unsuspecting diners. Instead, I stifled a yawn.

The question of how much sodium should be added to food is one of the trickier dietary issues in American households. Many people who cohabit have learned to work around the salt quirks of their loved ones, such that the food placed on the table is lightly salted at best, leaving saltaholics wide berth to season their own plates as they see fit.

This makes me wonder whether, in our social evolution, individualized tastes for salt didn’t force the decision to eat from single-serving plates rather than a communal trough.

While I cook with salt, of course, I use it in moderation. When I salt my plate at all, I make a quick pass with the shaker to add the barest hint of extra sodium. I’ve always felt that the flavor of food should speak for itself, and that salt’s sole purpose in this respect is to enhance the natural taste, not to make the food salty.

My husband, on the other hand, wants salt to be a prominent feature of his meal. I have learned not to take it personally when he unloads the saltshaker over his plate, erasing in an instant the work I’ve done at the stove to balance seasonings. Often, he doesn’t even sample his food before he salts. He just salts.

And he does it with gusto. I’ve often thought that if he ever develops carpal tunnel syndrome it will be from the repetitive motion of vigorously waving the saltshaker up and down over his food.

I did spend some time searching the Internet to see if I could gain insight into my husband’s un-salty salt complaint. I envisioned an eerie chatroom where crazed saltaholics commiserate and sane mortals dare not tread. I haven’t found the sodium cabal, but I did develop a promising lead.

The Salt Institute, a sodium think tank, operates an elaborate Web site (www.saltinstitute.org) that contains a members-only area. If the salt-heads are trading conspiracy theories anywhere, they’re probably doing it there.

To someone who isn’t a sodium fanatic, the public area of the Salt Institute Web site feels like a hostile foreign country. Among the questions the Salt Institute claims to be asked frequently are those whose answers minimize the health risks of sodium and celebrate salt’s contribution to farming and technology. The site also has maps of salt deposits and the chemical structure of salt, as well as an explanation for salt’s utility in baking. Without salt to preserve food, we are told, explorers would not have survived on the high seas.

This is pro-sodium propaganda at its finest: Not only does salt enable organic life, but it also de-ices our highways and makes chlorine possible. There’s even a proposed curriculum for the schools called “Salt: The Essence of Life.”

Sodium’s value in the kitchen is exalted in a generous supply of recipes that emphasize salt. In addition to recipes for such obvious choices as the salty dog bar drink and salt-rising bread, the Salt Institute offers instructions on curing meat with brine. The recipe directory includes eight recipes for salt-baked, salt-roasted or salt-smothered chicken, and such palate-pleasers as salt-encrusted salmon and chocolate chip cookies with salt.

The Salt Institute also takes a somewhat moralistic tone in promoting its commodity: “Salt is the world’s oldest known food additive and no decent kitchen would be without salt.”

I shudder to think what the Salt Institute would say about restaurants that serve un-salty salt.