Salt, Doctored and Undoctored 
Edition: 2024-09-12
salt,sodium,chloride,sea,mined,refined,pink,Celtic,Himalayan
For a surf zoner getting ample seafood, salt just happens,
and requires no particular attention. For uplanders, it’s a
critical deliberate nutrient, and always has been.
For good reason, the Hallstatt and Hallein salt mines in Austria may be the
oldest continually operating businesses on the planet
— 7000 years —
although you would
have to cross-check that with ancient, often still-operating
open-pool and salt-flat farms found in many regions.
Modern dogma on sodium intake leads to deficiency, as Dr. Davis
points out in ⎆Salt Your Food.
The latest book deflating the dogma is
The Salt Fix (DiNicolantonio).
But the present article below isn’t about daily dose
of sodium or salt, or even how
to assess your salt status.
It’s about the salt itself.
What kind of salt should I use?
is a frequently asked question.
The broad answer is: it’s not that big a deal, but
if you want to optimize your choice, read on.
TL;DR?
A. credible coarse mined (underground), such as Redmond Real Salt® or pink Himalayan
B. credible unrefined light colored modern sea salt
and for either, full analysis considered.
No credible analysis published : no sale.
Priorities: Picking a salt is a nutritional tweak (although an
easy one, due to the deminimus economic considerations). The
top concern is your overall diet and lifestyle program. So in
the Undoctored program, first attend to grain-free,
thyroid optimization, omega 3 intake, magnesium
intake, Vitamin D status and bowel flora. Picking a
salt is even subordinate to getting sufficient salt in any form.
⟲
What is the Ideal Human Dietary Salt?
Unknown, really, but what you might optimally respond to
is what your genotype is adapted to (and if you are of materially
mixed ancestry, there may be no insight along this line).
If they were coastal, they may be adapted to the mineral
profile of the ocean in key epochs. That ocean is not the
modern ocean.
If they were inlanders, they might have been adapted to
regional sources, that may or may not still be available
in pristine form. Note that the Maasai still drink cow blood.
Other than sodium,
no salt is a material source of minerals or elements that the
Undoctored program suggests for routine or contingent
supplementation, including magnesium, iodine, zinc,
iron. Salt can be a useful source of things needed in
trace amounts, particularly if otherwise deficient in diet.
⟲
All Salt is Sea Salt
Unless created by burning reagent-grade sodium metal in a
pure chlorine atmosphere (which dangerous detonation nobody
does for salt-making),
all food-grade salt originally came from sea water.
The considerations for consumption of it include:
🧂 ⇩How long ago was it sea water?
🧂 ⇩What’s been removed?
🧂 ⇩If refined, what’s still there?
🧂 ⇩If modern sea water, what’s still there?
🧂 ⇩What’s been added?
And yes, this implies that when you see an Ingredients
list item of “sea salt” (without a
modifying prefix), it might be a warning label.
The top explanation for that phrasing is
pandering to a perceived fad by formulators who
may or may not be competent. A simple statement
of “salt,” is frankly much more forthright.
The “pink Himalayan salt” seen on Wheat Free
Market Foods and Primal Kitchen products meets with my
personal approval.
I might add here that despite being a mineral,
“organic…salt”
⎆is
actually a thing, in some jurisdictions, but
the claim resolves few
questions per se that might be raised about
the specific product.
⟲
How Long Ago Was It Sea Water?
Mined salt (from strata of ancient sea beds) and inland
farmed salt (from evaporated land-locked seas, or continuing
mountain run-off) all trace their origins to
ancient oceans.
The underground sources are still largely pristine, but
may represent a mineral profile that is arguably too old
— pre-human. Pick your battles.
Provenance matters on unrefined mined salt. You might assume
that cheap generic bag of pink Himalayan is top shelf pebbles
from ⛏Khewra
Salt Mine in Pakistan, but without some credible
supporting data, it could be just random Mid East road salt,
perhaps in a counterfeit container.
Surface mined sources likely still exhibit their archaeological
mineral profiles, but have been exposed to the industrial age
atmosphere for a couple of centuries now, which has been
depositing contaminants on them, So there’s that.
Anything calling itself “sea salt” is presumably
from the modern ocean. That means that unless extraordinary
measures are applied, it contains ⎆all the contaminants of
the industrial, littering and atomic ages.[ ⇱Return to Questions ]
⟲
What’s Been Removed?
Refined salt is the default form of food-grade salt sold
in food markets. What makes it refined is a recrystallization
process to remove “impurities” thought to be
objectionable to customers. This process uses chemicals at
the liquid step, and often drying at high temperatures
(e.g. 1200°F/649°C, which suffices to drive
off trace gases and volatile compounds, including
Iodine).
Refining changes the mineral profile of the salt. Assessing
this requires comparing the full analysis of the product to
a full analysis of a sea salt or mined/unrefined salt.
Refined salt may turn out to be just sodium, chloride,
processing residues, anti-caking agents and [ephemeral] iodine.
Unrefined sea salts usually have gross contaminants
(dead seagulls) and debris (driftwood) removed,
but little else.[ ⇱Return to Questions ]
Mined unrefined salts typically have nothing removed.
⟲
If Refined, What’s Still There?
Processing residues are apt to be present, which reportedly
can include ferrocyanide, aluminum silicate and
ammonium citrate.[ ⇱Return to Questions ]
⟲
If Modern Sea Water, What’s Still There?
The list includes but is not
limited to: mercury, lead, chromium, petroleum, pesticides,
PCBs, dioxins, micro-plastics (now reported in sea water at
the poles), and perhaps a dash of radioactives.
The fundamental problem is that they can’t remove these toxins
without removing all the other micros too. The only way to then
provide them is to add them back in, and I suspect exactly no
one does this. If someone wants to argue that the toxin levels
don’t matter, then they need to consider that then any even
lower micronutrient levels don’t matter either.
This points up a marketing problem in the Sea Salt business.
The analysis data they often provide may be very selective.
They’ll list the trendy trace elements (say, iodine
and selenium), but “neglect” to provide a figure
for any of the heavy metals, esp. mercury and lead, nor the
industrial compounds.
The radiation can be ameliorated to some extent by seeking
Atlantic sea salt. But the greater consideration is being on
a diet that reduces cancer risk. Anyone who carefully avoids
Fukushima Daiichi™ brand sea salt, but remains on a
consensus full-time-glycemic diet with wheat, has inverted
cancer risk priorities.[ ⇱Return to Questions ]
⟲
What’s Been added?
Depending on source country policy, and retail country policy,
addition of {ephemeral} iodine to salt may be required, effectively
required, or just seen as a marketing feature.
Iodine is a harmless, if largely ineffective amendment to salt.
It evaporates fairly rapidly, so if the package is not air-tight,
it may be gone before first use. Once opened, assume it’s gone
in a month. Iodine is important, but get it from more reliable
sources.
Finely granulated salt tends to clump. Consequently, anti-caking
or flow agents are routinely added. Although this could easily
be a concerning grain starch like wheat dextrin, the list of
candidate contaminants is extensive and sobering.
Flow agents are easy to minimize, if not avoid altogether, by
sourcing a coarse salt and grinding it yourself. If using a
mined unrefined salt, make sure it’s a sturdy grinder, because
it really is little rocks, and some of it may have a hardness
greater than pure NaCl crystals.[ ⇱Return to Questions ]
My family is presently using a domestic ancient subterranean salt,
⎆Redmond
Real Salt, coarse (on ⎆Vitacost,
or you can order directly from Redmond).
Whatever you pick, insist on a complete credible analysis,
as well as credible chain of custody from mine to table.
With modern sea salt (coarse, unrefined), the question probably
comes down to: do the benefits of the trace minerals
outweigh the hazards of the trace toxins? A credible sea
salt would be my second choice, followed by a surface
mined salt, and with a coarse refined salt
a distant fourth.
Consumerlab.com has not {yet} routinely tested salts. ⎆On
a page that may be visible only to subscribers, they did, in 2012,
commission an analysis of a dozen products, and ended up advising
against black and grey salts due to heavy element concerns.
Limited time offer: Wiki tells us that
“Extraction
of Himalayan salt is expected to last 350 years at the
present rate of extraction of around 385,000 tons per
annum”
Someone also noted that some pink Himalayan they’d bought came in
a package touting that it was millions of years old, and the
package had an expiry date a year out. The author concluded
that they’d mined it just in the nick of time.[ ⇱Return to Top ]
___________
Bob Niland [⎆disclosures] [⎆topics] [⎆abbreviations]