Sea Salt – The Flavor of Oceans

Thứ hai, 16/01/2017 08:21

Too much or too little of salt can cause illness for human beings. People who work in medical field have tended to disgrace because people have been eating too much salt.


Massage the whole body with sea salt liquid, relax in 15 minutes then rinse well by warm water can help to beautify your skin.

There are quite many types of salt (NaCl), such as sea salt, rock salt (halite), table salt, Kosher salt, iodized salt, and pickling salt. And sea salt must carry flavors of oceans.

Crops need rains while salt needs sunlight

Rock salt is from salt mines. People pump water into salt mines to get concentrated salt liquid then crystalize that liquid to produce rock salt. This type of salt has high purity, white color, and smooth grains.

In the other hand, to exploit sea salt, people pipe salt water into saltpans and let the water evaporate under sunlight and crystal salt stay back on the pans.

Salinity of rock salt liquid is quite concentrated, around 20 – 30% or above while sea water is about 3.5%; miners can actively work with rock salt liquid (heating and re-crystalizing) while farmers must depends on moods of the sun to complete evaporating process. Therefore, price of sea salt is much higher than rock salt, and farmers on saltpans could have quit the job any time.

Where the ocean flavors come from?

Salt mines originally were from oceans as well. Million years ago, saltwater lakes, after evaporation and geological changes, became salt mines. Salt from those mines is quite pure while sea salt contains other mineral magnesium, calcium, potassium, iron, zinc, and a bit of iodine, which all of them are necessary for people’s health.

Sea salt also has the scent of oceans, which is seaweed. This typical scent would be strong or mild depends on locations of exploited areas. With some grains of sea salt on food, gourmet will recognized the essentially oceanic taste blending in every bite. That’s the reason gourmet prefers sea salt rather than other types of salt. In fact, if you use salt in BBQ sauce or broth, oceanic scent or Himalayan scent would be gone.

Import salt and Domestic salt

Household salt in the US or European countries is rock salt with smooth and dried miniature grains. This type is usually mixed with a tiny amount of iodine and anti-clotting additives for aesthetic aspect.

Our salt in Viet Nam, usually 1kg packages, is sea salt, and also iodine added to meet the standard of national health care policy. That sea salt has bigger grains, higher humidity, and less white than rock salt. There is another type of salt in Vietnamese market, which is totally desiccated and bright white, from China. Salt farmers in Viet Nam have been suffered because they can’t compete prices with Chinese products.

Another type is pickling salt, which is 100% pure rock salt. Iodine or anti-clotting addictive is unnecessary because this extremely smooth salt is used for pickling.

Why is salt disgraced by scientific people?

Long time ago, scientific field has disgraced salt mainly because of its sodium (Na).

Many researches have claimed that too much salty food can cause the risks of cardiovascular symptoms, coronary, stroke, stomach cancer, and especially high blood pressure.

Even though the cause of salt to mentioned diseases has been controversial, WHO recommended people not to excess 5g of salt per day.

In conclusion, salty tasting is just a habit. All types of salt is almost the same. There is no such thing that “this salt provides more minerals and vitamins” on commercial ads because the daily amount of salt we’ve consumed is not enough to carry them.

By Vu The Thanh/TGTT

Translator: Thu Pham


1  2  3  4  5  ...  Last Page