Lead Poisoning = Salty Food

[Lepidus]

A few things might be taken into account here. One is the a person who eats spicy foods aften will gain a tolerance to the spice after a while such that it will take more and more to taste spicy, this being called sensory adaptation or a sensory-perceptual alteration secondly with age, adults loss taste buds as a normal part of aging. Once again more salt would be needed to satisfiy the palate, this is often evidenced by observing the diatary requests of the elderly, very spicey, not neccasarly good for them, but spicy because it takes more spice for them to taste. This may be as simple as the people are just accustomed to eating such salty foods on a regular basis. With Lead Poisoning Sensory alteration is a later sign of chronic exposure. by this time other symptoms may have developed such as paralysis, blindness, and death. It seems somwhat unlikely enough Lead would have been ingested for a long enough period to warrent a long term change in diet to compensate for senory loss.