On Salt

Thank You Bruce, and Roy for your posts, and advice. Bruce, I think that website you gave me does have Himalaya on there, but the promotional poster that I saw outside the movie theatre when I went was different, so I can't say for sure. Of course not to many films have Yaks in them though. Now, The movie is actually somewhat important at this time, because what this village in the Himalayan mountains did, was trade salt, and they got all their salt from the mountain sides. So, putting aside Ohsawa's reccommendations for now, Do you know the difference between crude land salt, crude sea salt, and crude mountain salt(and does this one commonly come with more minerals, because Yaks urinate in there)?? Could someone use Crude unrefined land salt, or mountain salt and make minor preparatory changes to it so it would be more balanced? By unrefined i mean without being heated at high temps. and adding bleach, sugar, chemicals to make free flowing, ammonia, . . . When you reccomend sea salt to reccomend they add sea veggie powder or ground up sea vegtable?


B.R. (3 X A DAY)
Julian

[Roy Collins]

Julian wrote: >Do you know the difference between crude land salt, crude sea salt, and crude mountain salt(and does this one commonly come with more minerals, because Yaks urinate in there)?? Could someone use Crude unrefined land salt, or mountain salt and make minor preparatory changes to it so it would be more balanced? By unrefined i mean without being heated at high temps. and adding bleach, sugar, chemicals to make free flowing, ammonia, . . . When you reccomend sea salt to reccomend they add sea veggie powder or ground up sea vegtable?<

RC: Salt or sodium chloride is a compound that is widely distributed in nature. Sea salt, as the name implies, is salt that has been obtained from areas near oceans or seas by evaporation of the sea water. Rock salt occurs in beds deposited by the dehydration of ancient bodies of salt water. It is usually obtained by mining. Rock salt is sea salt minus the sea.

Sea salt has a higher iodine content and other trace elements than rock salt but some people prefer rock salt as it is said to contain less environmental pollutants. Rock salt is more yang than sea salt as it is not suspended in water. Mountain salt is the same as rock salt only concentrated into a different mass. Crystal salt is mined rock or sea salt in crystal form. It is less refined so more “crude”.

When mining rock salt much skill is needed to know how to remove clay and gypsum from it. This is usually done by filtration and evaporation methods. You can use natural solar evaporation technique or steam/vacuum kettle technique or direct heat evaporation in open pans. Most commercial (table) salt is produced using direct heat evaporation of rock salt that has been taken from subterranean beds that have been dug into wells. The brine from these wells is what is evaporated, refined, and preserved with dextrose (sugar) and other additives. Table salt has least amount of minerals and no trace elements.

When “they” (other authors) recommend using sea vegetable powder this means only that some form of seaweed has been dried and ground up (maybe put in a blender) until it is in powder form – as opposed to more granulated. Bladderwrack (also called Kelp) is a brown seaweed that contains all of the minerals and vitamins and the high nutritive qualities of iodine and cell salts considered vital to life. Irish Moss is a red seaweed that contains many of the same elements. Both are good candidates for making sea vegetable powder. You can usually find Bladderwrack in powdered form and placed in supplements in health food shops. Both Bladderwrack and Irish Moss grow all over New England on the rocky coast.

I hope this helps.

In peace, Roy