When it comes to food, variety is key to both health and taste. Sometimes, however, it seems that for all the variety some types of products all seem the same. For example, what’s the deal with all those different kinds of salt?
Salt may just be the most important spice known to humans. It is essential for life and for centuries it has been used to add savoriness to meat, enhance natural flavors, and even to balance out the sweetness of pastries. There’s a bottle of salt, the most common kind, refined table salt. This salt is treated with chemicals to remove “impurities” such as other minerals and bacteria to give it a longer shelf life. It is also usually bleached to give it a cleaner, whiter color to be more appealing to consumers.
Unrefined salt, often labeled or sold as Sea Salt, does not go through the same purification process. Instead, the product contains traces of all other minerals required to sustain life such as Zinc, Copper, Iron, Magnesium, Calcium, and Potassium plus many more. Unrefined salt contains a more balanced combination of minerals that the body can easily utilize.
Health conscious consumers may prefer sea salt for it’s more natural qualities than the average refined table salt. Some nutritionists suggest that refined table salt may as well be eliminated from our diets entirely since it adds sodium without balancing it with other essential minerals. This is not to say that Sea Salt is a lower sodium alternative and those on sodium restricted diets should treat all salts the same in regard to sodium content.
So if you haven’t tried substituting your table salt for sea salt check out our many Sea Salts here!
