Salt
Lots of recipes recommend "sea salt" OK, what's so great about sea salt? It's all sodium chloride after all.
Well, the thing about sea salt is that it contains many trace elements which are good for us. Table salt, that nice dry, free flowing, white (don't we all associate white with clean and pure?) salt that you buy at the supermarket has had all the trace elements "refined" out of it and we are left with 99.9% "pure" salt
Sounds good - to be pure, that is, but, the trouble is, all the good stuff has been refined out of it as well. Sea salt is not white and dry but grey and damp and goes clumpy in a humid environment.
Because sea salt has been evaporated from sea water not all sea salt is the same. It depends upon where it came from and whether it was extracted by the use of sunshine and so on. I'm not totally convinced about all of that - the salt connoisseurs certainly seem to get carried away with it all - but it is generally accepted that Celtic salt, extracted from old sea beds in Brittany is pretty special. Delia of deliaonline swears by English sea salt from Maldon, in Essex. (Ofcourse Delia's a Pom and would say that, but I'd, nonetheless, trust her judgement).
Iodine: We need iodine in our diet for our thyroid function to work properly. Sea salt will have iodine naturally, so that's OK. Table salt will usually have it added in the form of potassium iodide. Sugar is added to stabilize the iodine and as anti-caking chemical. Aluminum silicate is also added.
Iodised salt; Some salt is specifically labelled iodised salt. It is marketed in countries located well away from oceans where salt provides the only source of iodine and where a minimumiodine content is required by law.
Seasoned salt; some recipes call for this. It's simply salt "seasoned" with garlic and onion salt and other herbs. I don't use it myself- I prefer to use the ingredients separately. You've got more control that way. Oh, and don't keep seasoned salt lying around too long. It tends to go off after a few months.
Kosher Salt; has somewhat coarse and irregular crystals. I understand some "gourmet" (aren't we all gourmets?) cooks use it because of its flavour.
So - how much salt do we need?
Well, we certainly need salt. We can just do without too much of it. Hence the fads for "salt-free" this and "salt free" that.
But I can understand the concern. On the rare occasions I buy food or an ingredient in a can, I generally find it highly salted to my taste buds. Yes, and I was one of the salt free cooking zealots at one stage. Now I use moderate amounts of sea salt where called for, and probably less than is called for.
Anyway - about "how much do we need?" The following comes from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies (of the USA)
Healthy 19- to 50-year-old adults should consume 1.5 grams of sodium and 2.3 grams of chloride each day -- or 3.8 grams of salt -- to replace the amount lost daily on average through sweat and to achieve a diet that provides sufficient amounts of other essential nutrients. The tolerable upper intake level (UL) for salt is set at 5.8 grams per day.
More than 95 percent of American men and 90 percent of Canadian men ages 31 to 50, and 75 percent of American women and 50 percent of Canadian women in this age range regularly consume salt in excess of the UL
I wonder where we Aussies stand.... Looks like the Canadians are more sensible than the Americans ....
What say you to that?....Do you have any strong opinions about salt?..