I'm a huge fan of using non-salt spices to make all those lovingly-prepared foods taste good without subjecting myself to all those fake, taste-enhancing chemicals used on so many processed foods these days.

Most food sold in pre-packaged containers is essentially "dead" with a shelf life of many months. So, to combat that fact, chemicals like MSG and others are used to give that taste that consumers have grown used to.

There is nothing wrong, however, by buying frozen vegetables and other meals (without a slew of chemicals) and using your own spice cabinet to pump up the taste. When I fix a whole-wheat sandwich with fresh vegetables, for example, garlic and pepper go on as the taste enhancers -- not meat filled with sodium nitrite and monosodium glutamate (yuck).

In a neat side note, how about becoming more sharper mentally by using spices regularly? That's a side effect worth using pepper and other spices (like majoram and oregano) all the "thyme."