A new study published in Nature traces a molecular pathway from chronic salt consumption to the kind of neurological decay long associated with Alzheimer's disease, using fruit flies as a window into the cellular machinery we share. Researchers found that a high-salt diet triggers the misfolding of tau proteins and the reversal of mitochondrial energy processes — a cascade that ends in oxidative stress, memory loss, and shortened life. The work does not condemn the salt shaker outright, but it does something more consequential: it makes visible a chain of events that was previously only suspec