Unrefined salt vs. industrial grade sodium chloride - Letters to the Editor - Letter to the Editor

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients,  Feb-March, 2004  by V. Bradshaw-Black

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Editor:

Most people understand salt to mean sodium chloride. This is only true in part. Salt is understood in terms of preserving or seasoning. The Bible describes followers of Christ as the 'salt of the earth' and those 'worthy of their salt' referred to those paid for work in salt rather than money because salt was a rare and valuable commodity. The word 'salary' comes from the Latin 'salarium,' money for buying salt.

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Salt, like flour and sugar, is a natural substance which should inherently contain all the elements from its source. Salt should contain all the elements from the sea, wheat all the elements from the soil. However, since the days of industrialization and subsequent commercial economic gain, salt, like flour and sugar, has become processed and stripped of naturally occurring nutrients. This has reached such a crescendo that school children of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, have to be taught where milk, flour, salt and sugar come from. They know that the source is the supermarket and the product is white. Some parents of these same children do not even know what the natural substances are, what they should contain in nutrition terms, and how they have been processed and differ from the natural original.

In terms of health (or lack of it), the hallmark of this generation is chronic toxicity, chronic dehydration and chronic nutritional deficiencies (chronic meaning long-term). White flour and white sugar, being processed products stripped of their nutrients, are commonly blamed for the state of nutritional deficiencies but not much blame is attributed to sources of toxicity, chief among them being mercury fillings, fluoride, drugs (especially antibiotics and steroids, e.g. contraceptive pill) and vaccinations. Even less is attributed to the denaturing of one of our most valuable commodities--salt.

Being healthy means being as we were designed to be, determined by the original blueprint, unpolluted by inherited misinformation and shortcomings

There are many complex reasons for ill health and each one has to be addressed if we are to move towards being as we should be. We cannot be healthy if we are taking in substandard or deficient fluids and/or foods. Consider that over 70% of the human body is water and it is this fluid medium which is of vital importance in order to be able to process food on a gross and cellular level. It is folly to pay so much attention to the twigs and ignore the trunk and branches. Nutrition tends to magnify more and more detail but the whole picture is missing. Why go into the minutiae of how the body processes and rejects flour, sugar and salt whilst the wrong types altogether are being considered and studied at great length. Surely the primary step should be to introduce the right type of flour, sugar and salt, i.e. with full complement of nutrients from its source and not refined or chemicalised. If that were done the body would not have such rejection reactions (allergy etc.) and illness from deficiencies and toxicity (pesticides, chemicals, preservatives etc.) would not occur. Also, the vitally important fact that dehydrated, toxic people do not digest foods the way they should, is broadly overlooked.

All the information you read about the health aspects (or lack of them) of salt are based on the refined, chemicalised, nutritionally depleted end products labeled 'salt' specifically produced for use by the industrial sector. Only a small amount of salt goes to the food sector and this is taken from the same industrial grade stocks and is totally unfit for human consumption, just as white flour and sugar are unfit for human consumption, if health is desired. The human body needs the full spectrum of ionic trace elements in the natural ratios found in unrefined sea salt and the vitamins and minerals found in foods grown on replete soil, along with the same found in animal produce which has been reared and fed correctly and naturally. These elements must be in ionic form and in the required concentrations to be properly synergistic and beneficial, and this they are--in unrefined sea salt. The sodium chloride is perfectly balanced with other minerals so that the sodium can leave the tissues when its work is done. This vitally important physiological aspect of fluidity is missing in the salt we know as 'table salt' (whether labeled rock salt or sea salt) and this is justifiably well associated with negative effects on health.

Sadly, we no longer have nutrient-packed foods because the soil is depleted from decades of land management for commercial gain. (There is certainly nothing wrong with commercial gain but when it is at the expense of the nation's health, are such policies moral?) Even organic foods are depleted of original source nutrients although they are superior in that they do not contain pesticides and chemicals that processed foods do.

Nutritionists are aware of these facts and recommend supplemental vitamins and minerals because of clearly defined deficiencies but these can never be compared to the natural combinations and ratios found in foods. Food-state nutritional supplements are the best supplements available but, here again, they are manufactured and not produced naturally. Is the answer to eat nutritionally depleted foods and not bother with supplements because they are not natural? Deficiency states would manifest sooner or later and end up being labeled by the symptoms presented, rather than the causal deficiency. Food state supplementation has its place but is not to be compared to nature. Natural unrefined salt is still available from some countries and is an essential, natural source, nutritional substance and thus, automatically therapeutic in deficiency states. It is not available within the United Kingdom but is imported.