by MKOrchard

Created on: November 19, 2010

Sea salt” is a strange name in that most salt originally cames from the sea; but there are important differences between sea salt and ordinary table salt. Sea salt is much more expensive – six dollars and up per household purchase. It’s glamorized as gourmet because of its different taste and textures and its mineral variety. (It is also used as a bath salt with color and scents added. It can be absorbed through the skin, so if your family uses it as a bath salt, that should be considered while you determine how much you should cook with it. Sea salt's appeal is largely that it is considered to be a “natural” product.

The term "natural" on a food label means very little, however. It is vague and labeling regulations allow it to be used freely. In the broadest sense, any salt is natural. The minerals that compose it come from nature.

Cooking has two objectives: to make food taste good and to preserve its nutritional value. After all we eat to live, not live to eat - at least that is the healthier attitude. The taste differences between the two kinds of salt are somewhat subtle, but the nutritional differences are conspicuous.

The exact mineral content of sea salt depends upon what area it comes from and whether or not the manufacturer purifies it. Some sea water is polluted and other sea water is quite clean. It is more difficult to purify sea salt, because it has so many kinds of minerals it it. Don't assume that it is purified, just because you buy it from a food company.

Nutrient Content

The Tropical Salt Corporation  (based in New Jersey) obtains its sea salt from the Caribbean and has a plant in Haiti.  Because Haiti is an economically depressed nation,  it’s especially good to import from there. Read-on, however, to determine how much sea salt you might want to buy and use in your cooking.

The corporate web site, tropicalsalt.com, posts the mineral content of its salt as determined by laboratory testing. It has 174 parts per million of bromide, 78 ppm of iron, 54 ppm of chloride and 34 ppm of sodium, as well as trace amounts of potassium, magnesium, manganese and zinc. The lower sodium content of sea salt compared to table salt is good for most people, because so many processed foods contain unhealthful amounts of sodium.

In human physiology the balance between potassium and sodium are more important than the amount of either one. Both sea and table salt have only tiny amounts of potassium. The recommended

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