Is There Anything Wrong With Table Salt?

NotSoAlpha

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Ok, so Peat doesn't like unrefined salts like Sea Salt or Himalayan Salt.

He recommends Pickling Salt.

But what's wrong with standard table salt? Is the anti-caking agent really bad for you? Is there too much iodine?

It's just... Pickling Salt is incredibly hard to find. I've been to supermarkets all over the country and nobody has it. I've looked online and nobody sells it in my country. The only way I can get it is by importing it from The States. AT THE PRICE OF $60/KG!

If there is really something truly bad about standard table salt, I guess I will import pickling salt. But... can you tell me if it's really something worth being concerned about?
 

tara

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Ditto on pickling salt.
I've been using white sea salts for cooking/preparing food.
I think Peat suggests avoiding coloured salts because they tend to have a bit of iron and/or other impurities that may not be great. I think he also has concerns about the free-flowing agents in table salt, and that some people may be getting more iodine than needed. I have heard, but not verified, that where I am there are low iodine levels (and low selenium) in the soils, so not sure whether I personally would benefit from the higher or lower iodine salt. I still use regular iodised table salt sometimes if I want more salt on my food than I put in at cooking, but this is not on Peat's recommendation. Maybe I'll get around to a suitable sea salt grinder one day.
 

Spokey

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The anti caking agent is ferocyanide, this is a source of iron which we don't want too much of. It also can leave unpleasant bitter flavours in foods cooked with it.

That pink salt is also a source of iron (hence the colour).
 

pboy

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I think in one interview he said sea salt was fine...as long as theres no additives...there is a bit of iron, like rock salt (pink), its something like 2% per 400mg (1/4 tsp), not that bad. When salt is refined, almost if not all the iron and other metals (including calcium and mag) are taken out. Id say use whatever, just not a huge amount, and make sure not to get one with additives
 
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I bet anything from the sea has more heavy metals than salt from "Himalaya".
 

Spokey

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Be nice to have some definitive numbers. Mind you, I like sea salt so much I'm not sure I really want to know. :pray
 

Wilfrid

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I read that Ray use either the ( now famous) morton pickling salt or La baleine white sea salt ( that the one I'm using as in France La baleine is easy to find.).
However the one from La Baleine do contains ferrocyanide but below is Ray's opinion about the ferrocyanide stuff:

Question: "All the table salt here is either iodized, has sodium ferrocyanide or has potassium ferrocyanide. One brand, for example, reported a concentration of 0,005g/kg of the latter in their salt.
Do you think this would be a problem? Or would sea salt be a better option?"

Ray Peat: "Usually sea salt is better, but a little of the ferrocyanide isn't likely to hurt."

About the salt brand:

"That standard isn't very strict, but the salt is probably safe, if it's white. I usually use either La Baleine or Morton's canning and pickling salt."
 

montmorency

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David Brownstein would say there is a heck of a lot wrong with any form of refined salt.

He recommends what he calls unrefined salt, and warns that some "sea salts" are actually refined.

He says that all salt is ultimately from the sea, so to make a big deal about getting "sea salt" isn't what you should be concentrating on, but making sure it's unrefined. He recommends a particular brand that is mined on land (in the USA I presume), but unrefined. At least that way, you wouldn't have the marine contaminants that you'd have to worry about with salt that is actually harvested from the sea. (Don't think he's saying only that brand is any good though - one has to do one's own due diligence).

Check out his video about his book "Salt Your Way to Health".
 

Amazoniac

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Effects of chronic excess salt feeding
"Female rats were fed diets containing either excess sea salt or excess sodium chloride for periods up to 14 months. The hypertension produced by sea salt was more pronounced than that caused by sodium chloride alone, although the average amount of sodium chloride contained in the sea salt feeding was slightly less.[!] The ions involved in this incremental effect of sea salt were not identified."
 

Amazoniac

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"The salt-fed animals received the same chow to which one of the two salt supplements was added by the manufacturer. In one diet ("8 per cent NaCl food") the supplement was C.P. [Chemically Pure] sodium chloride; our analyses of the pellets showed an average of 8.09 per cent NaCl. The other diet ("sea salt food") had 11.6 per cent "sea salt" added, an amount which had been calculated to give a final sodium concentration equal to that in the 8 per cent food; our analyses, however, showed this food to contain an average of only 7.28 per cent NaCl. The manufacturer of this special sea salt stated that it was obtained by evaporating sea water and drying at an air temperature of 1100° F.¹ A comparison of the composition from data obtained by analysis at Brookhaven² with that received from the manufacturer is summarized in Table I."

upload_2020-11-20_15-58-37.png


Ratios [Na:Cl]:
[1:1.7+] -- Sea salt used
[1:1.5] -- Pure NaCl

The author is familiar:
- Dr. Lewis Kitchener Dahl, the Dahl Rats and the ‘Inconvenient truth’ abou the Genetics of Hypertension
 

Dr. B

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David Brownstein would say there is a heck of a lot wrong with any form of refined salt.

He recommends what he calls unrefined salt, and warns that some "sea salts" are actually refined.

He says that all salt is ultimately from the sea, so to make a big deal about getting "sea salt" isn't what you should be concentrating on, but making sure it's unrefined. He recommends a particular brand that is mined on land (in the USA I presume), but unrefined. At least that way, you wouldn't have the marine contaminants that you'd have to worry about with salt that is actually harvested from the sea. (Don't think he's saying only that brand is any good though - one has to do one's own due diligence).

Check out his video about his book "Salt Your Way to Health".
Is that redmonds real salt? I think its also a mountain or underground salt similar to himalayan? It also has the pink color
 

tigerlily96

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Effects of chronic excess salt feeding
"Female rats were fed diets containing either excess sea salt or excess sodium chloride for periods up to 14 months. The hypertension produced by sea salt was more pronounced than that caused by sodium chloride alone, although the average amount of sodium chloride contained in the sea salt feeding was slightly less.[!] The ions involved in this incremental effect of sea salt were not identified."
Interesting. I feel much worse on sea salt I know that much
 

Dr. B

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Interesting. I feel much worse on sea salt I know that much
It had even less sodium chloride so clearly there must be some crazy toxins in the sea salt that aren’t in regular salt. The sea is fairly toxic… basically used as a garbage can. So I would think anything from the sea whether fish or salt, is no longer pro metabolic. Even non organic produce or non organic animal products must be safer than sea products. Fish oil supplements are sometimes molecular distilled so ironically fish oil may actually be the safest sea or fish product out there…
 

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