Sea Salt Vs. Iodized Salt

The sodium we consume from food and water is only part of the problem. The highly refined nature of common table salt is the other part. Although our bodies are not designed to handle large amounts of sodium, healthy individuals usually can tolerate some excess sodium if it is in a naturally occurring form that our bodies can readily use or excrete. Commercial table salt used in our food and to soften water, however, is the furthest thing from this ideal. During the refining of table salt, natural sea salt or rock salt is stripped of more than 60 trace minerals and essential macro-nutrients.

Commercial refined salt is not only stripped of all its minerals, besides sodium and chloride, but it is also heated at such high temperatures that the chemical structure of the salt changes. In addition, it is chemically cleaned and bleached and treated with anticaking agents which prevent salt from mixing with water in the salt container. Unfortunately the anticaking agents perform the same function in the human body, so refined salt does not dissolve and combine with the water and fluids present in our system. Instead it builds up in the body and leaves deposits in organs and tissue, causing severe health problems.

Two of the most common anticaking agents used in the mass production of salt are sodium alumino-silicate and alumino-calcium silicate. These are both sources of aluminum, a toxic metal that has been implicated in the development of Alzheimer's disease and that certainly does not belong in a healthy diet. To make matters worse, the aluminum used in salt production leaves a bitter taste in salt, so manufactures usually add sugar in the form of dextrose to hide the taste of the aluminum. Refined sugar - as I explained in my previous book, Get the Sugar Out (Harmony Books 1996) - severely disrupts the equilibrium of the body and is associated with the development of more than 60 diseases.

Whether you consider the minerally unbalanced condition of the salt we use, the anticaking agents that prevent salt from doing some of its most important jobs in the body, or the chemicals and sugar that are added to it, table salt should be avoided because it is, without a doubt, hazardous to human health.