Salt. Your body needs salt. How much salt your body needs to have put into it depends on how much it sweats out. Few of us now do hard labor daily, especially hard labor in high temperatures. Those of us who live in the Pacific Northwest have many fewer days on which we could toil in the hot sun, were we of a mind to do so, than people living in, say, Arizona.
How much salt do you need to add to your diet, given you work indoors, mostly at a desk? Many foods are salted prior to our buying them. Everyone in America gets salt tucked into the foods they bring home from the local market — unless you bring home only fresh vegetables and fresh meat. Still, adding salt to food to make it taste better is not harmful for most of the people most of the time. That said, if you add more than the odd sprinkle, you may be consuming more salt than your body likes — unless, as noted above, you do hard labor in the sun daily. Too much salt can cause an assortment of maladies, most of which go away quickly after one reduces one’s salt intake. Most worrisome to most MDs is the contribution salt makes to “elevated” blood pressure. The three best things for that are (a) eat less salt; (b) get much more exercise; (c) eat more vegetables. Balance will soon be restored.
Some salt sellers (as contrasted with “salt cellars”) are claiming that “natural” salt, or sea salt, is better for people than that mined. Poppy-cock! At best, those folks are guilty of misleading marketing practices. At worst… I’ll let you supply your own “at worsts.” The fact is, salt is sodium chloride, chemically NaCl. It matters not where you get it, salt is salt. Can salt from the sea taste different than, say, salt from the Great Salt Lake? It can, but not because the salt is different. Rather, trace amounts of other minerals trot along with the salt, giving different salts differing tastes.
If you like salt from the Dead Sea better than salt from somewhere else, and if you are willing to pay the additional price, go for it. But don’t expect it to improve your health. And, don’t be misled into thinking that a half-a-teaspoon of Dead Sea salt, or Sargasso salt, or what-have-you salt is better for your health or less likely to raise your blood pressure than too much salt from any other region of the world.
Eat well, eat wisely, enjoy what you eat and with whom you eat it.
Bon Apetit.