Avenue Odd

I would not profess to have visited many restaurants in my short time of existence, but one little question always pops into my mind when i pick up the salt shaker and see grains of uncooked rice in it, mingled into the salt.

At first glance the logical deduction is that the grains of rice, being much larger than grains of salt, would push the salt around so that they would not coagulate and form clumps. Many a times, we (my friends and i) would leave it at that.

So, being the bored student that i am (bored of accounting to be exact), i went and Goggled it to find out if our logical minds served us well.

As it would appear, rice, or starch in general, is a good desiccating agent. It absorbs surrounding atmospheric moisture so that the salt would stay dry and not absorb moisture and clump up. This is a little excerpt of a answer from a professor.

I think both sides of the argument are correct. Indeed, the grains of rice will tend to "knock 
the lumps out of the salt." So would small glass beads. However, the porous starch structure of
well dried rice is also very attractive to moisture by virtue of hydrogen bonds that can form
between water molecules and the -OH groups in the starch matrix. Thus, dried starch grains make a 
fairly decent desiccating agent.

So now we know.