Salt on plastic baits?

I recently made an order from the CdC store and Slab included some tubes from LureCraft (thanks Ed). They appear to be packed in salt, or maybe sugar. This is the first time I have ever seen this. What is the purpose or advantage to it? I used to use plastic worms that had salt in the plastic for bass but this is the first time I've seen plastics packed in it.

Last year, Todd Kuhn wrote in OutdoorLife :

"Back in the early days of molded soft baits, salt was added to plastics in bulk as an inexpensive substitute for vinyl-resin filler. Today, varying degrees of salt are added to soft-plastics to both mask human odor and disguise the chemical smell of the plastic itself. "

I've also heard that the salty "taste" was to help make the fish hold on to the bait longer, thinking it "alive". And also to add "weight" to the bait, allowing for longer casts. There are many other "theories" out there.

When I use to buy BPS Squirmin Squirts tubes (salt impregnated), they would have salt all over them & some residue in the plastic bag they came in. I always figured it was simply that ... residue, and not actually "packing". But, further research leads me to believe that it might have been used as a "packing" material, simply to keep the plastic baits from getting hot & sticking or melting together. That makes sense if you consider that the "salt" put INTO the plastic is ground fine as flour, while the salt on the outside is granular (like table salt).

To put it all into perspective .... there's likely many different reasons why, depending on what the manufacturer wishes to accomplish & what the end customer wants (and believes).

PUT garlic salt on all my plastic.:fish

Put a salty bait in a jar of water let it set.Put a non salty bait in a jar of water let it set.See which one looks and feels more natural.