Whoever thought that salt would one day be considered a bad thing! There is so much of salt in us: our tears are salty and our blood tastes salty as well. The saltiness in human body fluids in fact parallels the saltiness of the ocean.

So why are doctors and health experts advising us to turn down our affection for common salt?

The main reason is that most city folk’s encounter with salt is now almost exclusively restricted to the industrially produced kind: fine grained, white, refined, maybe iodised, called “table salt”. Most people in fact don’t even know any other kind.

Here in Goa where I live, I buy salt that is made from the sea. Sea water is led into large flat shallow fields called pans and the salt gradually appears as the sea water evaporates. This crystal salt is nutritionally complete because it comes from the sea which has always harboured all the necessary elements for life. We often forget that life originated in the oceans.

98% of sea salt is what we in chemical terms call “sodium chloride”, but some 2% comprises a host of trace minerals – more than 80 of them, in fact – all of which are also found in the constitution of the human body and required by it. These include potassium, manganese, iodine, calcium, etc. The important thing to remember is the trace minerals in natural salt assist in the balanced use of salt in the human body. If they are not present with the salt, the body will find it difficult to absorb it or it will steal the calcium or manganese from the human body’s tissues or bones.

Salt from natural sources is never pure white, unless bleached. Salt made from sea water is in fact greyish. Those infected with the new sickness of wanting everything looking white may look down on it. In addition, it is often slightly damp and it can lump up as well, when stored. It’s difficult to use in salt shakers. But like gur – when compared to white sugar – unprocessed salt with its minerals is food for the body when compared with “table salt”.

Now let us have a look at how table salt is manufactured.

Salt extracted from the sea or salt mines is subjected to 1200 degree centigrade temperatures to dehydrate it and then bleached white. The crystalline structure is completely destroyed in the process. All the trace minerals occurring in the salt are removed. Thereafter, the “additives” industry adds aluminium hydroxide, potassium iodide and sugar to the pure sodium chloride to ensure that the salt can flow easily onto your omlette through the salt shaker.

These industrial processes belie understanding. They first remove the natural trace elements which always accompany salt and then proceed to add chemicals that are useful for the manufacturer to sell the product but are nutritionally useless for the consumer including the iodine because it volatilises before it can be used!

90% of salt produced in the industrial way is destined for industrial operations. The remaining goes into processed foods like the ever popular chips, noodles, sauces, cornflakes and salty snacks. Industrial salt is essentially used as a food preservative, so that the food in which it is coated or mixed can have a longer shelf life.

If you are addicted to eating processed food, chances are you are eating salt in excess of the norm. We need only one teaspoon of salt per day. But through processed foods people eat three to four times the amount. Instant noodles, for instance, have ten times the salt found in sea water!

If you can’t get sea salt, try and get any other natural unprocessed salt. The packet will always indicate if it is unprocessed and unrefined. One well known natural salt is in fact extracted from the Himalayas and is sold as Himalayan salt. The colour of this salt will be a pale cream or pink.

One other reason to use natural salt is that its intake is limited to wholesome levels because you can only use it when cooking your food and not add it when eating. For safe salt use there is only one indicator: if you have used too much when cooking, you can’t eat the meal. Your tongue will convey that message, without asking.

(Published in Prevention Magazine)