"Healthier" salt for potato chips?

We have just learnt in Chemical Bonding that sodium chloride comes in the form of a giant ionic lattice, with the sodium and chloride ions regularly arranged in stacked layers.

In such crystals, the ions can be arranged in different ways, the most common arrangements being the simple cubic, body-centred cubic, and face-centred cubic.

Sodium chloride adopts the face-centred cubic system, with each sodium ion being surrounded by 6 chloride ions in an octahedral manner.

The company that makes Lay's potato chips, Pepsico is looking at changing the crystal lattice of sodium chloride so as to make the salt that they use for their potato chips healthier. It has been found that while sodium chloride, as we know it, is very soluble in water, only 20% of the crystals on the chips dissolve in our mouths when we eat them. This means that most of the salt we are ingesting does not contribute to the saltiness of the food, but has the undesirable effect of increasing our sodium intake. It has been found that high sodium intakes lead to many health problems, such as high blood pressure.

In an effort to make potato chips healthier, scientists are trying to increase the surface area of the sodium chloride crystals so that they will dissolve more completely on our tongues. This will allow the manufacturers to put less salt in our potato chips, but still maintain the ideal level of saltiness that we love in our chips.

To read the original article on this from Popular Science, click here: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-04/frito-lay-changes-shape-salt