To the Editor:
Your article about salt highlights the deleterious effects of excessive
sodium intake. But you do not mention the distinction between natural
sea salt and commercial salt, the latter accounting for most of the salt
consumed in America today.
Until fairly recent times, everybody consumed sea salt, either
manufactured directly from sea water or from mined salt left over from
ancient evaporated seas.
Today, most salt is refined and stripped of the numerous trace minerals
and elements, although iodine compounds and various anticaking compounds
are added.
We are evolutionarily unprepared for this new salt. The potassium,
calcium, magnesium and other minerals in sea salt play an important role
in blood pressure maintenance, and probably mitigate the
blood-pressure-raising effects of sodium chloride.
All animals need sodium and other minerals, since we all constantly lose
these minerals through our kidneys and skin perspiration.
The more active we are, and the hotter the temperature, the more we need
the essential nutrient called salt. But it needs to be our biologically
compatible sea salt and not our commercially refined “salt.”
The emerging whole food and natural food market and its advocates may
help return us to the proper salt for good health.
Ronald Halweil
Southampton, N.Y., May 30, 2010
The writer is an ear, nose and throat specialist.
