Food: Salt
chameleon salt   (+2)  [vote for, against]
Adaptive bold color would boost the, um, salience of salt shaken onto food, helping avoid tragic under- and oversalting.

Harlequin salts may already be both shaked and baked in the margarita world, but a cursory search turned up no such product intended to solve the teetotaling eater's more general need for condiment contrast. Given that salt is used on foods of sundry hue (white eggs (or green eggs), red tomatoes, charred meat &c.), a salt whose crystals automatically maximized their contrast relative to their substrate would be great. Of course, such a quality would pose a problem for the crystals while still in the shaker; perhaps they would spontaneously manifest a solution to some 3D analog to topology's four-color theorem for 2D. ..
-- n-pearson, Jun 27 2003

Given that a mix of multi-colored salts would show up on any background, you hardly need color changing magic.
-- DrCurry, Jun 27 2003


True, but you'd have to have it very uniformly mixed in order to accurately judge dosage on a given background. Also, though the technology needed would obviously be more expensive (hello, NASA?), one could in principle mix it up in just one vat, rather than many variegated ones.
-- n-pearson, Jun 27 2003


It's in a salt-shaker, duh. A couple of shakes, and it'll be mixed enough for army work.
-- DrCurry, Jun 27 2003


Spoken like a true advocate of the Curry Council! What happened to seasoning solidarity?? Just where do you think your -salary- comes from, my friend...
-- n-pearson, Jun 27 2003



random, halfbakery