There's salt and then there's salt.  

The salt in the supermarket is chemically refined to remove the valuable trace minerals (valuable in the sense that they can sell it elsewhere for more money) so all that's left is pure sodium choloride.  It's superheated, which changes the salt molecules so they don't dissolve in water (or your digestive system) as readily as natural salt does, which keeps it from clumping in humid air.  Then they add "free flow agents" including aluminum compounds, to further ensure against lumps.  (Aluminum deposits in the brain are the medical marker for Alzeimer's.) They also add potassium iodide, since they've refined out the naturally occurring iodine and, to make the iodide additive stick to the processed salt grains, some dextrose.  Yes, folks, there's a sugar in common salt.  And then they bleach it so it looks the way people expect salt to look.


 


 I use the Celtic Sea Salt, which is made by evaporating clean seawater in the sun until there's nothing left but chunky grey crystals, then bagging the crystals up and selling them with no further processing.  It's not too expensive if you buy the coarse crystals in bulk (I go through Amazon) and grind them at home.  

I also use ground seaweed, primarily dulse, or whole seaweed in dishes where that's suitable.  The seaweed comes from two companies, Maine Coast Sea Vegetables (http://seaveg.com/) and Ironbound Island (http://www.ironboundisland.com/).  Unlike Asian producers who sometimes
 spray their seaweed with chemical dessicants and preservatives, these two just pull the stuff out of the water, dry it, maybe grind it, bag it and ship it.  I'm sure there are other companies doing it this way on the US West Coast and in other countries with coastline and natural health movements.  When I lived in Oregon I developed a taste for those Pacific seaweeds that look like tiny palm trees, which I cannot get here in Massachusetts.  But the dulse is widely sold in natural food stores all over the country, and if any one store is too small to carry it on the shelves, they can probably special order it.


~ Joan

-----Original Message-----
From: Kristina K. Carlton <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 8:01 am
Subject: salt










Hi All,

 

It seems that my elevated heart rate is at least to some degree connected to
my salt intake. If I stop eating salt, my HR goes way up. When I add salt
back in, at about 1 ½ tsp a day, my heart comes down slightly, but I have
horrid fluid retention. Does this make sense? How many of you here add salt
to your diet? Do you just salt your food or take salt in between meals? The
other issue is, with increased salt I can get my resting heart rate to come
back down, but on exertion it’s still pretty high.

 

I am so tired of this.

 

Thank you,

Kristina

www.nojunque.com <> 

-----------------------------------

“As a man thinks,20so is he.”

Proverbs 27:3