Why don’t any fruits or plant-based foods taste naturally salty?

— Mahua Ray

A: The primary reason plant-based foods are rarely salty while animal products have a more savoury taste profile is because animals have nervous systems and blood and plants don’t.

Animals generally need lots of sodium to maintain their extracellular fluids like blood and lymph and to fire neurons. And because salt is vital but historically rare in nature, animals have evolved to seek it out and animal tissues naturally store it in their fluids.

Most plants have no nervous system or circulatory system and use potassium mainly to regulate their internal pressure (called turgor) and growth. In fact, high levels of sodium are actually toxic to most land plants, which is why salting the earth kills vegetation. There are a few plant-based foods called halophytes that naturally taste salty. They include sea beans, sea grapes, and celery. They have evolved to live in salt marshes.

Finally, fruits are sweet to attract animals. Plants want animals to eat their fruit so they will carry the seeds elsewhere and deposit them with a bit of natural fertilizer. A naturally salty fruit would be dehydrating to the animal eating it.