Saltsale

There was a time when salt was worth its weight in gold – literally. And quite right too. Without salt, life would cease. Your muscles would not function, your ability to think would be impaired, your memory would fail and your heart would stop beating. And yet today salt is the demon of the diet world.

As with so many of our ridiculous diet fads, the finger of blame is pointing in entirely the wrong direction, and much depends on how we define ‘salt’.

There are three basic types of salt most of us can buy – standard table salt, sea salt and rock salt –and within these three categories there are numerous variations in terms of source and chemical make-up.

It may be helpful to think of salt in the same way you think of sugar. Refined sugar contains none of the trace elements (very low levels of both essential and non-essential minerals) and cofactors necessary for health that unrefined sugar does. These trace elements and cofactors are also useful in helping the body metabolise sugar better. Without them sugar is just calories.

Salt is much the same way. Unrefined salts, whether mined from the earth or harvested from the sea, contain a broad spectrum of trace elements, often in the same balance as are found in human blood. These include magnesium and potassium, necessary for health and which help the body metabolise the sodium better. Indeed, potassium and magnesium work synergistically with sodium to regulate water balance and nerve and muscle impulses. The more sodium you eat, the more potassium and magnesium you need to maintain balance. Few of us get enough of these elements in our diets, yet we eat high amounts of sodium in salt… Full article here