You need to add salt as you cook. Yes, you can add it afterwards, but you don't get the same flavor layering, food texture, salt penetration, and for some foods, the necessary chemical reactions in your dishes. In some sense, I feel confident that your wife is right based purely on the fact that you think you can just add salt after it's cooked and get the same thing.
I'm a white dude with no tattoos, but I have this argument all the time with my family. "You can add hot sauce and salt afterward for yourself!" That's not how this works Susan. That's not how any of this works. All of cooking is chemistry and physics! And get over it! If I'm cooking I'm using salt and guajillio peppers!
"Tattoos. Coke. And chronic stress. These were the ingredients chosen to create the perfect line cooks. But Head Chef Marco accidentally added an extra ingredient to the concoction: Chemical Gay."
It's normal when I'm making fucking chili Susan! And there's a difference between too much salt and adding the appropriate amount of salt.
And research has shown that the most effective way to not have problems with too much sodium in the blood/high blood pressure is to drink more fucking water.
And the person that complains to me about the salt levels in my food? A) didn't pay for the fucking food and B) drinks 12 fucking diet Dr peppers a day because "they are healthier." So fuck em!
Fuck being healthy at this point tbh, I just want to have a good time until I die, we’re all fucked anyways so what’s even the point, I get to suffer longer in old age from the climate wars? Great.
Gout is largely genetic. You can eat like shit and have all the gout-y foods you want if you're not genetically predisposed to it. Your point still stands though. I don't have first-hand experience thankfully, but being fat and out of shape, diabetic, etc., etc., etc., does not look fun.
No offense to you of course, but it just looks miserable from the outside.
Yeah, it generally works fine for sauces, but you're not going to get salt to permeate into your noodles from just throwing it on top afterwards, for example.