AROUND HOME : Notes on a Salt Sensor, and Garden and Animal Events : Salt Detector

THREE DESPERATE characters have become the most wanted criminals of the dinner table. Masters of disguise, they conceal themselves in the most innocent looking products. Most of the time, you don’t even know they’ve been around until your doctor begins to scold you for fraternizing with the enemy.

The three villains are salt, sugar and fat. But of the three, the hardest to detect is salt, which slips into almost everything you eat. In fact, the foods that taste the saltiest can contain less sodium than those in which the salt is masked by other flavors. An ounce of salted peanuts, for instance, contains 160 milligrams of sodium, while an ounce of Quaker Instant Oatmeal delivers 400 milligrams.

You need never be fooled again. The new Salt-Chek Sodium Sensor is here to take the guesswork out of dinner time. It looks like a thermometer, and it is small enough to carry everywhere you go. When you want to check the salt content of your food, simply insert the battery-operated sensor into any moist food, push the button and find out how many milligrams of salt there are in each ounce. Multiply the reading by the number of ounces in the dish--and then decide whether you want to keep on eating.

There’s only one small problem with this swell new gadget: If ignorance is bliss, then the truth can be pretty depressing.

Salt-Chek Sodium Sensor, $35, is available at The Sharper Image, located at 601 Wilshire Blvd. in downtown Los Angeles (213) 622-2351 and at 9550 Little Santa Monica Blvd. in Beverly Hills (213) 271-0515.