• For salt, substitute herbs, spices and aromatics (i.e. garlic and ginger). They won't taste salty — you mustn't expect that and there will be a period of time when you miss salt while you recalibrate your taste buds. Still, they help fill the flavor gap.

• Buy or grow fresh herbs and use real garlic and fresh spices. Buy spices in the smallest possible container and use them frequently; to prevent bugs in spices from the pepper family (i.e. chili powder, paprika), keep them in the freezer.

• Buy a good mortar and pestle. Thai stone ones are heavy-duty and attractive on the kitchen counter — or get a coffee grinder that you reserve for grinding spices only. Mincing or grinding herbs and heating spices helps release the oils that create scent and flavor.

• Another trick that chefs use is to "layer" flavors. Put herbs and spices into the food during cooking, but also add more of the same flavors toward the end of cooking or in a garnish, such as adding ginger juice to a stew, then grating some fresh ginger on top before serving.

The brain has some difficulty differentiating between salty and sour, so one option is fooling the taste buds with acidic ingredients that mimic salt. Lemon juice, lime juice and vinegar work.

• Keep fresh lemons and limes on hand and stock several kinds of vinegar: plain white, cider, a good-quality balsamic, Japanese rice vinegar and Chinese black vinegar (which has a smoky, sweetish flavor). Invest in a Microplane zester, which looks like a carpenter's rasp; it make short work of zesting. Add acidic ingredients to soups, stews, sauces and braised dishes when they need some uplift. Add a teaspoon or so at a time, let the mixture simmer a little, then taste.

If you are keeping track of sodium consumption, be aware that there's sodium in many foods that you wouldn't expect: commercial breads, dairy foods and fresh meats (especially poultry, which is often injected with saline solution), even municipal water.

• "The No-Salt, Lowest-Sodium Cookbook" by Donald A. Gazzaniga; Thomas Dunne Books, paper, $15.95. Techniques and recipes from a man who consumes an average of 500 milligrams of sodium a day; lots of information on finding low-salt, no-salt products.

• "The American Heart Association Low-Salt Cookbook"; Ballantine, paperback, $7.50. A wide variety of recipes, including many basic spice blends, mixtures, sauces.

• "The Chinese Salt-Free Diet Cookbook" by Merle Schell; Plume books, paperback. This 1986 book is out of print but available from online sources; $35 and up for hardback, $5 and up paperback at Amazon.com.