Sea Salt for Better Health

"Sea salt" or "solar salt" is harvested directly from an ocean or sea, usually by channeling seawater into large trays and allowing the sun and wind to evaporate it naturally. Sea salt still contains traces of minerals including iron, magnesium, calcium, potassium, manganese, zinc, and iodine, while common table salt is mined from large salt flats from which some minerals washed away and contaminates may have entered. Proponents of sea salt are excited about its bright, pure, clean flavor, and about the subtleties attributed to its trace minerals. It takes LESS sea salt to attain the same level of saltiness in food, since its finer granules dissolve quicker on the tongue and quickly send the signal “enough salt” to the brain. All things considered, using real sea salt results in approximately 16% LESS SODIUM INTAKE than using common table salt.

Those who have not replaced processed common table salt with organic sea salts have not yet realized that, like all spices, different salts provide different flavors. Each salt has its unique taste due to its mix of minerals and crystal variations. The selection of salt is an important decision of some of the world's great chefs and finest restaurants. They pay more for better ingredients that yield better taste, and fine sea salts are often at least one of their "secret ingredients”. Diversity in salt selection also prevents all their food from tasting the same.

Our sea salt is harvested from the Pacific Ocean on the California shore, as opposed to sea salt from the coastal areas of foreign countries along the Mediterranean Sea, the North Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean. Nothing appears wrong with those waters, but US FDA regulations govern American food-grade sea salt, while sea salt of foreign origin often don't approach the standards of US FDA Food Grade.

There are several authentic sea salts, but also hundreds of lesser quality or even bogus sea salts. Some falsely advertise that spicing and/or treatment of the salt was done to affect its flavor. A lot of French sea salts don't even include actual sea salt at all, and there is no such thing as natural "Celtic" or "smoked" sea salt.

The most fundamental and highly used spice is salt. While excessive salt intake is harmful, having no salt isn't wise since salt is a natural adversary to fungus, bacteria, and viruses. Medical studies reveal many health benefits in switching from common table salt to sea salt, mostly due to decreased sodium content. Aside from better taste, reducing sodium in your diet by switching to sea salt improves the chances of avoiding heart and circulatory problems. If you already have those problems, you'll be doing something about it. So live long, my friends, and bon appetit!   Be sure to also try our several blends of Cajun Seasoning, all of which utilize high-quality sea salt.

Huge amounts of mined salt are used by fast-food restaurants and in virtually all processing of grocery store products. The reason is simple. Mined salt is significantly cheaper. As consumers, we have fewer healthy choices in either restaurant or grocery products because the standards lean towards the cheapest production costs. While it would sometimes only add minimal cost to offer truly nutritious and healthy ingredients, consumers in America are largely indifferent to ingredients. That enables food producers to consider using the cheapest possible ingredients, and they are constantly competing price-wise to keep a share of the market. While some restaurants and grocery stores may even advertise themselves as health-oriented, many of them will be paying more attention to cheaper production costs.

Sadly, most people have less than healthy practices in their own kitchens as well. Buying good ground wheat bread rather than highly refined flour bread, using olive oil rather than cheap vegetable oil, and using high mineral content sea salt rather than regular mined salt should not increase total food costs by more than 3% or so. Switching to organically grown vegetables and leaner higher quality meats might not increase food costs more than 15%, and should vastly improve a person's health, state of mind, and well-being. A good book comes to mind: You Are What You Eat by Adel Davis.

The kitchen and dining areas used to be at the heart of family living. For most people now it is only an afterthought and a question of convenience. A number of folks drive through the fast-food lane for a burger and toss dinner in the microwave. It seems that after someone determines he or she will compromise, it eventually leads to just giving up. Small adjustments - using high mineral content sea salt, olive oil, good bread, etc. - start to tip the health scale more into a person’s favor. It’s not hard to adjust the basic ingredients most often used. These are 1) good pure water (not tap water). 2) sea salt rather than mined salt, 3) stone-ground wheat or other grain-based bread, and 4) olive oil. If one makes a habit of these basic changes, he or she will probably go on to further improvements. Buying the cheapest ingredients possible, as well as marketing and consumer indifference, are the reasons our diets have become so unhealthy.