My pal Buzz sent me the link to this rather excellent collection of photos of Mast Brothers Chocolate (as seen previously on Salt & Fat) and their bean-to-bar “factory” in Brooklyn.

Buzz: “I love how they look like 19th century Brooklynites lost in time.”

Having already defeated smoking and trans fats, Michael Bloomberg has now turned his attention to salt. I’m certainly a fan of eliminating the first two but here I think Bloomberg’s gone too far in his coddling of New Yorkers. Salt is as misunderstood as it is an important component of the human diet and, in my mind, unfairly lumped together with truly noxious additives — like hydrogenated fats, artificial sweeteners and the dreaded high fructose corn syrup.

One of the worst misconceptions about salt is that it’s linked to high blood pressure and other heart diseases, despite no scientific evidence definitively linking the two. I’ll have more to say about salt in the future but put me down as an opponent of top down regulations against its use.