RANT INCOMING!

There are a few people in here who've read too many 'health' websites written by quacks and homeopaths. Salt (for human consumption) is sodium chloride (NaCl) whether you spend £100 or 25p on it - that core chemical formula does not change. That's not to say unrefined (e.g. rock) salts aren't different - different shapes or different textures may be required, and the flavour can be different too, since unrefined salt still have various bits of rock and mineral in them (which in fact means you're paying more for someone to do less work), but why do you assume that unrefined means better?

If your objection to table salt is "it's a chemical" then you've much bigger problems, because everything is made up of chemical.

If your objection is that table salt is that it is processed/refined, then say goodbye to everything from pasturised milk to corn flakes which are processed too.

Don't forget too that most things you buy in the shop that has added salt (which is most things) are adding 'table salt' because it's cheap, and many cafes and restaurants will be using it too.

If you think table salt is bad for you health, the sodium in table salt is doing the same damage as the sodium in any other kind of salt.

The bleaching thing. Tell me what happens when you try to search table salt and bleaching - most of the hits are blogs, or alternatives health websites, who make lots of claims but are hilariously incapable of proving of referencing any of their points (or if they do, they just point to another quack website). Making table salt goes like this (in very simple terms) - take unrefined salt, dissolve it in water, separate the salt from everything else, and let it solidify again. There's no magic. There's no adding 'toxic chemicals'. There's no 'bleach'. It's a very simple chemical process which you have done yourself in high school science. Here's a slightly more detailed explanation:
http://www.saltassociation.co.uk/education/make-salt/white-salt-production/

Even Maldon's own website tell you how it's done:
http://www.maldonsalt.co.uk/About-Salt-Where-does-Salt-come-from.html

Sainsbury's basic table salt is 25p for 750g (so not that far from this deal price). It contains salt, and an anti-caking agent Sodium Ferrocyanide (E535) which stops it clumping together. The EU reckons it's safe, you can read their report here:
http://ec.europa.eu/food/fs/sc/scan/out70_en.pdf

But then again, you've got **** all idea what's in the unrefined salts - it comes with whatever happens to be in it. And even if some of that 'stuff' is supposed healthy minerals, you are almost certainly getting enough of those minerals from other sources already.

Some salts are fortified with iodine, on the recommendation of the WHO, to combat iodine deficiency. If you want to learn about food fortification, you can read this report. You don't have to buy fortified salt.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/204310/Fortified_Food_SI_guidance_DH_151111_-_FINAL.pdf

Personally, I don't think it's much of a 'deal' to spend 29 times more on 250g of Maldon salt at £1.80, and that's amongst the 'cheapest' of the expensive salts!!

Finally, if you're really concerned about the health impacts of salt, then just don't add any. Eating too much of ANY kind of salt is, unfortunately, bad for us, and most of us get too much salt before we even start adding it. But you if you have to have to salt on your chips, just buy table salt!

As salt is a preservative , how can it go off ? What happens if you eat out of date salt ?

With 4kgs of table salt you can probably make a small table out of it....

I'll see myself out

If you have a block pave drive way spend £10 on this and you have enough natural weed killer for the summer into the winter. Just spread out evenly and it will stop pretty much all weed growth.

Why is the website in Latin ?

Feb16 bbe? Already outdated?

As salt is a preservative , how can it go off ? What happens if you eat out of date salt ?

If you have a block pave drive way spend £10 on this and you have enough natural weed killer for the summer into the winter. Just spread out evenly and it will stop pretty much all weed growth.

Never heard of that . Ta . If it's to make you concentrate on the pictures it didn't work . I was translating the Latin

That is a great deal of salt for a pound! I think it would last us for a very long time on our fish and chips, but I've added some heat anyway as it is a good deal.
I don't agree with DrSteveRiot (I'm guessing not a medical doctor - or doctor of any sort) about this being poison though. We enjoy a little salt on our food; we are not uneducated or poor, and I suspect will not 'die off' quicker (quicker than what I wonder?).
Good find OP.
O

far too much salt in this, wayyy over your RDA

Anyone else reminded of "Top Secret" here?

Had this post been published few thousand years ago, people would have run amok to the stores. I heard salt was equivalent to very precious material that time.

good find op, heat added

RANT INCOMING!

There are a few people in here who've read too many 'health' websites written by quacks and homeopaths. Salt (for human consumption) is sodium chloride (NaCl) whether you spend £100 or 25p on it - that core chemical formula does not change. That's not to say unrefined (e.g. rock) salts aren't different - different shapes or different textures may be required, and the flavour can be different too, since unrefined salt still have various bits of rock and mineral in them (which in fact means you're paying more for someone to do less work), but why do you assume that unrefined means better?

If your objection to table salt is "it's a chemical" then you've much bigger problems, because everything is made up of chemical.

If your objection is that table salt is that it is processed/refined, then say goodbye to everything from pasturised milk to corn flakes which are processed too.

Don't forget too that most things you buy in the shop that has added salt (which is most things) are adding 'table salt' because it's cheap, and many cafes and restaurants will be using it too.

If you think table salt is bad for you health, the sodium in table salt is doing the same damage as the sodium in any other kind of salt.

The bleaching thing. Tell me what happens when you try to search table salt and bleaching - most of the hits are blogs, or alternatives health websites, who make lots of claims but are hilariously incapable of proving of referencing any of their points (or if they do, they just point to another quack website). Making table salt goes like this (in very simple terms) - take unrefined salt, dissolve it in water, separate the salt from everything else, and let it solidify again. There's no magic. There's no adding 'toxic chemicals'. There's no 'bleach'. It's a very simple chemical process which you have done yourself in high school science. Here's a slightly more detailed explanation:
http://www.saltassociation.co.uk/education/make-salt/white-salt-production/

Even Maldon's own website tell you how it's done:
http://www.maldonsalt.co.uk/About-Salt-Where-does-Salt-come-from.html

Sainsbury's basic table salt is 25p for 750g (so not that far from this deal price). It contains salt, and an anti-caking agent Sodium Ferrocyanide (E535) which stops it clumping together. The EU reckons it's safe, you can read their report here:
http://ec.europa.eu/food/fs/sc/scan/out70_en.pdf

But then again, you've got **** all idea what's in the unrefined salts - it comes with whatever happens to be in it. And even if some of that 'stuff' is supposed healthy minerals, you are almost certainly getting enough of those minerals from other sources already.

Some salts are fortified with iodine, on the recommendation of the WHO, to combat iodine deficiency. If you want to learn about food fortification, you can read this report. You don't have to buy fortified salt.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/204310/Fortified_Food_SI_guidance_DH_151111_-_FINAL.pdf

Personally, I don't think it's much of a 'deal' to spend 29 times more on 250g of Maldon salt at £1.80, and that's amongst the 'cheapest' of the expensive salts!!

Finally, if you're really concerned about the health impacts of salt, then just don't add any. Eating too much of ANY kind of salt is, unfortunately, bad for us, and most of us get too much salt before we even start adding it. But you if you have to have to salt on your chips, just buy table salt!

OK, you've got me there. It's sodium chloride, but it's not salt? What is it then? Or do you mean it's not natural, unrefined salt? Nothing necessarily great about natural things. Deadly nightshade and cholera are natural.

With 4kgs of table salt you can probably make a small table out of it....

I'll see myself out

Who buys 4 kg of salt. Is there a nuclear war on the horizon?

I am going to buy it for my nuclear bunker in the back garden. Heat added

That would last me a lifetime :smiley:

good fr low blood pressure as well

Always amazes me that people pay a premium for sea salt, made from a sea which mankind has polluted with radiation, organic chemicals an
d loads more which didn't exist when the salt deposits in Cheshire and the like were formed!

NOOOOO.....Don't eat!! mix with white vinegar and washing up liquid. great weed killer!

Really guy's... salt at one part of the country wtf is this bull :/

good price - salt is excellent for preserving - our ancestors knew this. got to laugh at a best before date though

If that is true, then a normal, adult man would have to eat around 250g of salt in one go (or about half a pound). I don't think anyone could do that without smelling a rat.

What you said about everything becoming toxic in high enough concentrations reminded me of my time as an Army Compressed Air Diver. The teaching was that oxygen would become toxic at a partial pressure of (from memory) 1.5 bar, so for breathing compressed air that would be about 65m deep. So, even the air we breathe becomes poisonous if we have too much of it.

Not wishing to go too far on a tangent, all salt is NaCl, the stuff that is dissolved in the sea, and the stuff that is mixed up with other things in rocks is all sodium chloride. It would be completely wrong to believe that table salt was made via some chemical process that combined huge lumps of sodium with tanks of chlorine (or perhaps sodium hydroxide and hydrogen chloride if I remember my O level chemistry) in some factory. Table salt is generally made by dissolving rock salt in water, getting rid of all the other stuff that does not dissolve, and crystallizing the salt out by evaporation. I think there is still a home industry doing this in Cheshire.There is nothing to be scared of in that simple process, which has been going on for thousands of years.
So, anyone who thinks that sea or rock salt is any better (or less bad) for them than table salt is just plain wrong. Sea and rock salt (for eating, not the stuff the council put on the roads in the winter) are attractively marketed and cost much more, they may taste a bit different but that is down to the impurities that have been (deliberately) left in the mix.
I'm wondering whether DrSteveRiot is the same person as plain MrRiot? If so perhaps neither has a PhD?
Best wishes,
O

You calculation is way off the mark, it's a common mistake though >

http://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=11412

Like me does anyone on here now have the urge to visit their nearest Chippy for their T on Monday
Mines a Sausage Supper :laughing:

Again, not wishing to go too far on a tangent,it would seem that my previous calculation was right. Using the worked example from the link, but with my assumption that an adult man might weigh 85Kg and therefore a lethal dose would be about 250g:

So let me think this through. 3000 mg/kg is a lethal dose of table salt, so to figure out a lethal dose for a particular person, you would multiply the person's weight in kg by 3000 mg to find the weight in mg of salt necessary. So if my neighbour weighs 85 kg, then 255000 mg of salt would do him in, and that's 255000 / 1,000 = 255 grams.
QED.

Yes you're right. Anyway don't eat too much salt it can kill you :smiley: Too much salt should be difficult to consume and it's probably rare occurrence anyway. I'm no fan of health and safety, so if you do consume too much to kill you, it'll be your fault and no one else's.