February 18, 2014 • 42 mins
A Roman senator once said, "Mankind can live without gold, but not without salt." Right he was. The human body needs salt so much we have developed a taste for it specifically. But too much salt can be toxic. Learn about salt's role in human history and how we get it from the Earth in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and this is Stuff
you should Know the podcast. Oh yeah, Jerry's over there.
She's all laughy today for some reason. The salty dog.
(00:24):
Why did salty calling someone salty? I wonder where that
came from. I meant to look that up. It's someone
I didn't look up because you know, you're in a
salty nod. Yeah, I've said that plenty uh and once
that comes from like a salty dog. Here's here, this
is this is my idea. Okay, so salty described somebody
(00:45):
who is a little coarse, a little rough around the edges,
a little upset. Hear me out because their faces usually
puckered into like a a sour puss face. And what
makes your face pucker eating salt. So there's a salty person, okay,
I would call them lemony. Well, so take something with
(01:06):
a grain of salt. Actually ancient that's from the romans Um.
They would take poison with a grain of salt, or's
something that was hard to swallow with a grain of
salt to make it go down more easily. Okay, somebody
not being worth their salt. In this article it says
that um slaves were traded with salt, and if you
(01:26):
got your hands on like a slave, that wasn't worth
much Like that, he wasn't worth his salt. Is that
not the origin I found? The first reference in print
came from an eighteen oh five description or book about
an expedition to Guinea Bissau, and it mentions a guy
who wasn't worth his salt. He's a good man, Peter
(01:47):
Hale h a y eli um, but he wasn't worth
his salt, the guy said. And I looked it up
and I couldn't find that whether Hale was hired or
was a slave. But I got the impression that, Um,
what the guy was talking about wasn't that he had
traded salt for hail, but not worth the salt like
in his body. No, he was not worth the salt,
(02:10):
meaning a salary, which supposedly salary is rooted in the
idea of paying someone in salt, same with soldiers salt
dre and to give salt salad to The word salad
comes from the word salt, so salt is a it's
a it's an important thing. Historically speaking, there's been economies
(02:33):
largely based on salt. There have been um cultures rated
by other cultures because of salt. Um. If you were
an ancient salt producing area, probably the rulers control with
the tight grip um that salt production and salt distribution um.
(02:55):
And that actually carried on into the modern age when
the when Great Britain was occupying India, they had a
tight control on salt production there um. And actually Gandhi
started a revolution or helped along the revolution to overthrow
British imperial power through a salt protest. He walked two
(03:16):
hundred and forty miles to the coast where the salt
production facilities were and grabbed a bit of salty clay
and boiled it, boiled the salt out of it, which
was an illegal act, and that protests spurred other similar protests,
and the British were like, oh, hey, you can't do that, mate,
you can't mind your own salt. But he did because
(03:39):
he was Gandhi. It was called the Salt March to
Dandhi by gand by Gandhi. Uh yeah. Salt dates back
to sixty b C. And they actually found evidence of
salt trading in prehistoric times. So obviously it's used to
spice food is great, but it's used to preserve food.
Was super able, yeah back in the day and still today,
(04:02):
because salt is one of these things. You remember, Nature
loves homeostasis, it loves balance. If you introduce salt to
the mix, it kind of throws off that balance. So
to gain homeostasis, salt is introduced into say meat. It
likes to go into the meat, but it also draws
out the moisture, whether it's blood, water, whatever, so it
(04:24):
dries out the meat. It introduces the salt and it
draws out the moisture. That's right. That's called curing, which
preserves things because anytime bacteria comes in contact with that
salty meat, from that point on, the bacteria boom gets
dried out and dies. Yeah, that's why packaged foods are
still loaded with sodium. Unfortunately, I got some stuff on
(04:46):
that later. But it was used as a currency in
Ethiopia up until the twentieth century, and was used as
a form of suicide in China for nobility. They would
o d on salt and kill themselves. Oh yeah, because
it was expensive and very valuable. So nobility, that's like,
it was like a noble way to go out. And
we'll talk in a minute, like what happens when you
(05:08):
have too much salt? It's not very pleasant. It's not
very pleasant. But you know in medieval Europe, remember we
did the ten medieval torture devices this episode, well we
skipped one called the goats tongue, and it was apparently
a real thing, a tickle torture. They would dip your feet,
bringing a goat, and the goat would lick the bottom
of your feet and then they would dip it again.
(05:29):
And from that in the description, no, I'm saying like
it wasn't in there. Um from the description, apparently being
tortured tickle tortured was not pleasant. I would love to
have my feet looked by a goat. They would do
it until you did not love it. That was the
point of the goats tongue to it. Sounds like fun
(05:50):
to me. Uh. And the Middle Ages, salt was transported
along the notorious Old Salt Route and northern Germany. I
know what I'm gonna get you for Christmas, now, a
go in some salt water. I've had both at the
same time. I don't know, I didn't think about it. Uh,
it was played this big role in early America as well. Yeah,
(06:10):
Massachusetts Bay Colony had the first pattern to produce salt
here in the colonies, saltwater, and uh they did so
for two hundred years. Uh. The Erie Canal opened primarily
to transport salt. Yeah, they called it the ditch that
salt built. It sounds like something you just made up. No,
I swear I've been on the Erie Canal. Oh. Yeah, yeah,
(06:31):
they have this nice system of locks, and um, they
used to there's still like donkey trails from where the
donkeys used to pull these little flat bottom boats that
would carry salt and whatnot. And now yuppies walk along
those trails. Dog yuppies. A they're still yuppies. Oh yeah, thanks, Yeah,
(06:52):
I heard one the other day. Uh, dual income large
dog owner. All right. And the early salt was apparently
four times expensive as beef because salt was valuable obviously,
and we were allows you with beef. And in Civil
War salt played a big part in the Union strategy. Um,
(07:13):
there were quite a few battles fault over capturing salt
works and salt mines. Yeah, in Saltville, Virginia. Yeah, I
wonder what they do there. And it actually had a
big effect on the salt shortage on the Confederate troops. Yeah,
not just the troops, but the people behind the lines
back in the Confederate States were like, we want our salt,
and they had a huge impact on morale apparently, I
(07:34):
would say so. And the reason why salt is so important.
If you haven't gotten the impression that it is important
by now, you should rewind the podcast and just listen
to the last several minutes over again. Yeah, salt is
extraordinarily important because the human body requires it. It's something
that we need to survive and to live, so much
so that we actually have a taste sense for it.
(08:00):
It's the only you don't need better to live, or
sour or umami. As a matter of fact, things like
bitter and sour are there. I think to detect things
that we shouldn't be eating. Salt is to detect something
we need that's right and we can. Actually, this is
so mind blowing to me. I love the human body.
I think it's amazingly wonderful in ways that we don't
(08:23):
even fully understand yet. But consider this. When you need salt,
your body produces a craving in you for salt that
is awesome. Like I'm one of those believers. I I
don't follow it necessarily myself, but in a diet, well,
no thing, But in a diet where you just eat
what you crave, I think you can go off the
(08:45):
rails because I think that we uh have the wrong
things now. Yes, now, but if you could go back
a hundred fifty years, maybe I would bet you could
survive pretty easily and thrive on a diet where you
were just kind of led by your cravings, like oh
it need some megs and eat a couple of eggs, steak.
You don't know. You should pay attention to yourself, listen
(09:08):
to what your body is telling you, and I'll bet
you find that you do have specific cravings for specific moods,
foods that are like very simple meat like chuck go
eat a steak, Chuck go eat some eggs, like things
that are basic staples. I'll bet you'll notice you have
cravings salt. Uh. Let's let's break it down chemically. Um
(09:31):
it's sodium and chlorine are the two basic elements, and salt.
I think we all know this, which are electrolytes. That's right,
and we'll get into that in a minute. Um, sodium
is silvery white metal, and it is neither one of
these are like super friendly independently of one another. No,
you know, like especially chlorine. Yeah, sodium reacts violently if
(09:51):
you mix it with water and oxidizes in air. Chlorine
exists in gas at a room temperature. They're both really volatile.
But when you put them together and you have sodium chloride,
they make beautiful music, makes beautiful halite, uh, and beautiful music.
And sodium chloride is is about a sixty sodium to chloride,
(10:12):
by the way, is that right? Yeah? It makes little cubes, right, Yeah?
Is it? The molecules are cubicle, right. The sodium packs
in pretty tight, and then the chlorine fills in the
rest and they make tiny little cubes. It's actually reversed,
That's what I said. Yeah, the chloride is packed and
(10:34):
then the sodium fills in. But you know, I would
have thought the sodium was bigger. Oh well, Um, will
you have is an A C L. That's right? And
you mentioned electrolytes. Those are minerals that conduct electricity in
our body and our fluids and tissues, which is very
important important as muscle movement, we run on electricity. Heart
involuntary muscle UM moves through electrical impulse. I guess all
(10:59):
muscles do. Yeah, you want your eyes to blank, buddy? Yeah,
eat some salt, right, And so there's two conditions that
you can have conceivably well three, three would be just
all the systems are normal. But um, the other two
is too little salt and too much salt. And too
little salt is called hypoon atrema. Yeah, that's what that
lady died of the hold your WI for a week contest?
(11:21):
Oh is that right? Yeah? You can o d on water,
and I guess that's what you would ultimately die from.
Is hypone tremea their water toxicity. Um, if you have
too much water, you probably have too little salt, because
water flush is salt from your system is the method
that your kidneys use to maintain the balance of salt
(11:42):
and other electrolytes in your body. And that's why you
might drink gatorade if you're working out, because it has
electrolytes in it, right, exactly. You don't want to water
your crop land with it, though, as we found from
the movie Idiocracy. Yeah, and actually found too that in
the nineteen eighties there was a lot of controversy over
salting roads killing roadside vegetation. Well, yeah, for sure. I
(12:05):
mean like that, if you were into conquests and that
kind of thing, and you wanted to make sure that
the land you just occupied couldn't be used to grow
crops to feed an imposing armor army, you would plow
the land with salt. Salt the earth, yeah, which is
not the salt of the earth, because that means you're
a good fellah, but not a good fella because those
guys are salty. Wow, look at you. That was that
(12:28):
was a team effort. Clever wordplay, my friend. Uh. If
you take diuretics um or you have like massive diarrhea
for a period of days, or vomiting or some sort
of stomach bug, you might be at risk for hyponatremia. Yeah,
because you're flushing out all of this, all of your
electual lights. This is salt that your body needs. So
(12:50):
if it's out of balance, you're going to suffer things like, um, well,
an inability for your heart to beat, which is often fatal. Yea,
kidney problems, yeah, um on the other hand, you can
have hypernit tremia, which is too much salt, and like
you said, if you're a Chinese aristocrat, um, you may
die from hyper netremia. Yeah. They even had a m
(13:14):
man sometimes a blanket on word how to manual. Well,
it's sort of like how many grams of salt you
needed per pound in your body? That like a chart.
I guess if you want to kill yourself in China,
yours I you do it. Yeah, there's so much salt
you need? That was ro is he like that? Yeah?
I'm off today. No, you know, I'm a little off.
You were on my my microphone just swerved to the left,
(13:35):
but were happening. There's a ghost in here. Um, so
too much sodium, I think you said already is hypern
tremia instead of hypo hyper hyper hypo exactly. It's like glacemia,
but with no tremia exactly, and with hypernutremia. Basically, remember
how salt if you um, if you introduce it to say,
(13:58):
a jerky of some sort, it will dry it out. Yes,
it's just a shameful thing to do. Um. If you
introduce it to a meat or something like that, it's
going to dry it out because through osmosis in search
of homeostasis, um, it does the same thing to your
blood and your extracellular fluids. That salt will draw out
(14:22):
the fluids in your cells, but will maintain it in
your blood. It's water retention basically. Yeah, your kidneys, when
it has too much salt to deal with, kicks it
around the blood supply. Just like remember in the hangover
episode when you why drugs are so fatal when you
drink a lot of alcohol because your kidneys are trying
(14:43):
to process your the alcohol, so it keeps the drugs
just going around and around in your blood supply. Same
thing with too much salt. If your kidneys have too
much to deal with, they just keep the excess going
around in your blood. And since that salt is drawing
out all the excess moisture and increase is the volume
of your blood, which makes your blood pressure rise, which
makes your heart beat, yes, which supposedly logically would put
(15:09):
you at risk for a stroker heart attack, and that's
how you would die from hypernatremia. Yeah, I have high
blood pressure. Well, supposedly sodium. Cutting your sodium down isn't
going to help. Yeah, there's a lot of conflicting data
on that for sure. Um, well we'll get to nutrition soon.
We'll cover that. Well, how about before we move on,
do you want to do a message break? So chuck. Um.
(15:37):
They're like you said, there's a lot of controversy over
how much salt or how little salt you should have
on a daily basis in your diet. Yeah. Um, the
Heart National Heart, Blood and Long Institute say no more
than two point four grams of sodium. It's about a
teaspoon per day. Americans they found consume an average of
(15:59):
a about three point four per day, So that's one
gram too much on average. And um, you actually don't
need more than about a half a gram a day
if you want to maintain that stasis. So yeah, just
for your electro light intake. The thing is, though, um,
there was for many years because it makes sense that
(16:21):
if you're if too much salt increases your blood pressure,
then too much salt should be um, should put you
at risk for strokes and heart attacks. Right. Well, the
CDC panel surveyed material and all did and all all
sorts of studies that found no, cutting your sodium intake
doesn't really doesn't decrease your risk of heart attack or stroke.
(16:45):
And as a matter of fact, there is was it
just more hereditary. They don't know what it is. They
just know that basically below three thousand grams or three
thousand milligrams of salt and above seven thousand mill grams
of salt a day were two groups that were at
higher risk of heart attack. So if you have too
(17:06):
little salt, you're at higher risk of heart attack. To okay,
so try to keep it between three thousand and four
thousand milligrams three thousand and seven th The thing is
is they they don't They weren't comfortable making any recommendation.
They were just sayone scared, this is what we found.
Everyone scared, like, go on the record, yeah, because we
just don't know. Like, it doesn't make any sense that
(17:27):
you would have a heart attack if you ate less
than three grams of sault today. That that flies in
the face of of um conventional wisdom, and nobody's figured
out why yet. Interesting, Well, it's something you should monitor
at the very least, because I think a lot of
people look at fat grams and calories and all that
stuff is great to look at nutritionally, but um, when
you start poking around on the soup can and you see, Wow,
(17:50):
this chicken noodle soup has milligrams of sodium, but it's
so good. And this one little can which is almost
a gram of sodium, yeah close to it. A quarter
pounder with bacon and cheese. You didn't do Big Max,
Now I should have been communist. I think Big Max.
Actually I did see this is milligrams. The big Mac
(18:12):
I think was around leven pounds more. With the bacon.
I think they have like a whole bacon onion ranch
or something topping that you can put on quarter pounders.
Now I've not yet tried this, but like I think
about it from time to time, like right now, yeah,
right now, especially uh so at anyway, just give it
(18:35):
a look. Like soups are notoriously high in sodium. Package
foods are notoriously high in sodium. Um, don't just think
about the table salt that you use, Like, oh, I
didn't salt my food that much today. You need a
lot of package food or eating a lot of sodium. Yeah,
and nobody can tell you how much you should be
eating or shouldn't be eating. But like you said, it's
good to just pay attention to that kind of thing,
because you probably are eating a lot more than you realize,
(18:56):
and you should be eating a lot of package food anyway,
I'll just go ahead and say that, so um chuck, Yes,
what kinds of salt are there? Well, first of all,
I should say I love salt to Salt and pepper
are my favorite two spices. I'm from the South, have
a taste for salt um and pork fat. Yeah that's
(19:17):
pretty southern too, Yeah for sure. Uh So I love salt.
I like good Mediterranean sea salt. That's what I used
at my house. Uh and I'm gonna plug this local saltier.
I just made that word up oh later in the show. Okay,
But um, I'm a big salt fan. I like salt too.
I like sweet, I like ummi, I like um sour.
(19:40):
I'm training myself to like bitter through the use of kampari. Yeah.
Like I I've found out that I'm a bitter super taster. So,
like things that seem like normal to other people are
like really bitter to me. Like one example, fruit, Yeah,
but it's like like it just gustingly bitter to me.
(20:01):
Like I can't understand how the rest of humanity eats
grape fruit. I don't like grapefruit. Well, maybe you're a
bitter super taster too, But I have to tell you this,
I've trained myself to like um, grapefruit and coompari just
by exposure, like I've come to appreciate them. With campari,
it's a bar like a bitter DIGESTI for Appritif you
(20:21):
do like a campari and soda, it's in a negrowning right. Oh,
I think I've seen people like if their stomachs upset
or is that bitters and soda? Well, campari is a
type of bitters. It's not that super compact bitters like angustura,
but it is a type of bitter. I think it's
a DIGESTI Okay, it's good stuff anyway. I like salt.
What I'm really saying there is I like well seasoned food.
(20:43):
And if you're a chef or a home chef, you
know that salt is important to cooking, super important and
baking obviously, but bland food can't do it. No, what's
the point. What is the point? Agreed? Types of salt,
well start with table salt and and like man, if
your if your doctor put you on like a bland
(21:06):
food diet, I feel for you. But there's stuff out
there you can eat. There's spike, there's Mrs Dash, there's
you should be seasoning your food to some extent, like
bland food is is like it's bland life. Yeah. They
even have the imitation salt of the New and New salt.
I didn't do any research on that, but I've bought
(21:26):
it before. You do you like it? I didn't use
it that much, but it's it exists in my home
thanks to the empty thing of Mediterranean sea salt. Yeah,
all right, it's the table salt is the first one
we should cover. That's the traditional um either iodized or
non iodized, fine grained salt that you see in many
(21:49):
many homes and restaurants, and it's IDEs. They did a
little research into this. Did you look up iodie salt? Yeah, well,
I mean I know that they they added it because
at one point it was like fluoride. They thought, well,
we need this in a good place to put it
in salt. Yeah, because most people use salt, and we'll
just put it into table salt because it's an easy additive.
(22:09):
But um, there was a real problem with hyper thyroidism,
things like Goiter's mental retardation. UM just poor fetal development
linked to um iodine deficiency. So they put it in salt,
and apparently there it's considered to be responsible for this
thing called the Flynn effect, which there was like a
(22:31):
three i Q point rise in the middle of the
twentieth century in western nations and nobody could figure out
what it is. And they think now that it was
because they added iodine to salt, and so it had
the aggregate effect of raising our i Q by um
preventing poor fetal development. Yeah. Well, it's still a problem
(22:52):
in other parts of the world, just not here in
North America, right, other parts of the world that don't
have IDI salt. You know, dumb they are. Oh man,
that was terrible. I'm just kidding. You need to apologize
to the rest of the world. I'm sorry everybody. Uh So,
like I said, table saw, this is the most common salt. Uh.
They remove all the impurities. Um. They have things in
(23:13):
there to make it not clump and stick together, and
so it pours freely, so even when it rains, it pours. Well,
should we get to that. Yeah, don't you have something
on that? Yeah? The UM I just for some reason
thought of the Morton salt girl, and like every great
advertising story, they were like, how do we It was
sort of a new thing at the time, in nineteen
(23:33):
eleven two package salt this way in a container with
a spout. How they package it before? I don't know,
the blocks, probably like a deer like or something. I'm
not sure actually, but I know that this was a
fairly revolutionary product to package it like this and process
it like this. Um So the agency was um In
(23:56):
w Air and Company, and Don Draper walks in and says,
they've got twelve proposals for you, which one do you like?
And Sterling Morton of the Morton Company, of course, it's
always someone else, like his son or his wife or something.
It was his son in secretary. Um pointed toward one
of the ads with a little girl holding the umbrella
(24:17):
and said this is the one, And he said, you
know what, I think you guys are right. The whole
story is right there in the picture. Because the whole
point was this salt doesn't clump when it rains at poors,
and the little girls can't be trusted to be sent
to the store by themselves because they ruin all the salt.
Keeping the nozzle open on the way home. Uh. Some
(24:38):
of the different um slogans they had was flows freely,
runs freely, pours, it never rains, but it pours. And
then they finally settled on when it rains at poors. Yeah,
that's the best because it never rains but it pors.
Doesn't make any sense. They probably fired that person. And
she's been updated one to three, four five times. Oh
(25:00):
really yeah, the last time in nineteen sixty eight and
she's been the same since then. And there was never
a real model for that girl. That's a question they
often get. She totally made up. Yeah, because he was like,
it's Morton's granddaughters. What you know, you want to thank
Selma Selma Morton. So that is the story of the Sken.
(25:20):
That's an old timing name. If ever there was one
that's a college right, No, it's like a person's name. Well,
it's a college too. Had a friend that played soccer
there e r s k I ny there's a college
named Colgate too. It's like crazy to me, Uh, Sea
Salt Sir is next. Uh. It's gonna cost you some
(25:43):
more money because of several reasons, one of which if
they go old school and In some parts of France,
they still harvest the stuff by hand, which is pretty cool.
You might see it called flair to sell, which is
French for flower of salt, and uh, it's not processed
like table salt is. So you're gonna have a lot
of those trace minerals. It's gonna be coarse and flaky,
(26:05):
and it colors it too. It can for sure, like
you can have white sea salt, pink, black, gray, or
a combination of them. Pink salts are traditionally associated with
him alay and salt um, and there the pink is
often for the result of things like copper or iron
or apparently um. There's a type that contains an algae,
(26:29):
a salt tolerant algae, which would make it an extreme
aphile um. That gives it has the beta caroteen pigment
in it, and that gives it a pinkish hue. That salt.
You're eating algae, pink algae in your salt, which is
pretty neat. That is pretty neat, and that that's Hawaiian, right.
A lot of times Hawaii has a different one and alaya,
(26:52):
Oh I read that as algae, Yeah, I did too.
A couple of times and I was like, why would
they separate these two out there's no g No, it's
a Hawaiian Alaya salt has iron oxide in it from
the volcanoes. Oh, that makes sense. And WHOI also produces
black salt too from the lava. Yeah, in a little
bit of charcoal. I'll have to try some of those actually,
and yeah, and then there's gray salts to um, which
(27:14):
is uh, there's cell gree which is from France. And
then smoked salt is also gray, where they just take
some salt and smoke it. Yeah, they put it over
a smoky fire, and you have smoked salt. Do you
like smoky foods sometimes? Yeah, it could be a little
overbearing for me at times. Yeah, in the hands of
you know, I guess somebody who knows what they're doing
(27:35):
with the smoked It's like, I like a good smoked meat,
little day type of thing, but not necessarily like you know,
when they add like artificial smoke in the kitchen to
it to a meal. You know what I'm saying. Although
smoked cheese is good, oh yeah, man, good smokey. And
thanks to fan Hillary Lozar from for sending us some
(27:57):
great cheese. Yeah, that was very good to you. I
had some of that smoked goody yesterday. Actually when I
got home, I haven't had it yet. Is it good?
And as soon as I walked in the door, I
got a knife out. It's like, I gotta try this stuff.
Yeah's delicious anyway, Thanks Hilary. Um So, chefs and Gormond's
will say sea salt is what you want to be
using because you're gonna get a unique flavor from those
(28:20):
minerals that are not in table salt. I agree with them.
It's tough to bake with though, Yeah, it's tough to measure.
You get a lot more precise measuring, for sure from
table salt. And they don't recommend you bake with sea salt, no,
because baking is a specific chemical reaction. Cooking is different. Yeah,
they say that they most chefs don't cook with sea salt,
(28:41):
but they will just add it as a topper. But
I've cooked with sea salt and I have no plenty
of chefs that cooked with sea salt, So I disagree
with that. Um Well, they with the topper, they mean
like it's a finishing salt. It brings out like all
the flavors if you sprinkle it on them. Yeah, I
mean it's definitely used, but I've also seen it used
in the food right so well, that leads us to
kash your salt. Apparently some people like to cook with
(29:02):
kosher salt. And if you are using following a recipe
and you're switching out the whatever amount of salt is
called for, you want to double it because kasher salt
is larger, coarse grained salt. And here to me is
a fact of the podcast, want to several Kosher salt
is not necessarily kosher itself. It's used to make things kosher.
(29:26):
That I didn't. I thought kasher salt was like salt
that had been blessed by a rabbi or something. Really
I never understood it, but now I do. It's it's
salt they used to make things kosher. If you use
table salt UH to make something kosher, it's not gonna work.
Kasher salt because it's large and coarse grained. UH makes
meat kosher by drawing the blood out because eating blood
(29:46):
ain't kosher. So if you salt it with kosher salt,
it's gonna draw the blood out of the meat. Then bam,
you have a kosher cut of steak baby boom. And
it's not iodized either, right by the way. Um. And
then we have the redheaded step child of the salt family,
rock salt, which is used. Um. It's got a lot
(30:07):
of impurities, it's unrefined, it's very large grained, and it's
used to melt ice on roads and sidewalks and to
make homemade ice cream. Yeah, and probably some other stuff.
But do you know of any other uses? I think
rock salts used in um, some chemical productions. That makes sense. Um,
(30:27):
if you want to make a good industrial brine, rock
salts your your man. Yeah, alright, salt mining, that's how
you get salt, because it is a natural thing that
exists in the earth. UM. The largest producer of salt
these days, no surprise, is China. UM. In two thousand
twelve they produced about sixty five million tons. The US
(30:49):
is not too far behind a forty four million. Then
you've got Germany, India and Australia as the other leading
top five salt producers these days. In India gets the
profit from in salt production thanks to Gandhi. I guess so,
huh that's pretty neat. And think about that. The number
four on the list. Yeah, and they weren't even allowed
(31:10):
to produce it not so long ago. No, they were
allowed to produce it, but all the money went to Yeah,
okay jerks. So there's three types of mining main three
main types. There's deep shaft mining, solar evaporation, and solution mining.
And deep shaft mining is basically like any other type
of mining, where you just um, drill a shaft down
(31:34):
into a mine, which an underground sea bed is what
where the salt is, right, that's where you get your salt. Um. Yeah,
that's I think that's one of the facts of the podcast. Yeah,
they're ancient underground seabed, ancients beds that dried up and
the salt remained and they formed, um these basically salt
deposits that can be dozens or hundreds of feet thick
(31:57):
and massively wide, and you drill down into these things.
You create a couple of shafts, and then they usually
use what's called a room and pillar system, which really helps.
It's very difficult to explain, but if you see a
picture of it it makes perfect sense. But um, you're
basically creating a checkerboard pattern going down in mining. The
(32:21):
salt deposits so you leave it right, Yeah, you blast
a room, but you leave a couple of adjacent rooms
for support and then um, eventually you've you've mined out
all the salt and then you fill it with industrial waste.
That is one thing they do. So that's deep shaft mining. Yeah.
And they'll remove the salt there and crush it and
(32:42):
uh pull it to the service and further process it
from there, depending on what kind of salts you want
in the end. Right. And there's this awesome mine um
called the Wheelishka Salt Mine in Cracow, Poland, and it
has a full on cathedral made out of salt. Amazing.
They have several like chapels, but then a full cathedral
(33:04):
um and it's all made us salts in this old
salt mine that's not a UNESCO site um. And they
went to the trouble of boiling salt. It was a
table salt mine. They would boil this raw salt and
purify it and then use that purified salt to make
crystal chandeliers out of salt. Like, the whole cathedral is
(33:24):
just salt. It's amazing looking man. Yeah, check it out.
No goats allowed. They would recap it or no chucks allowed,
just walk around like licking stuff. They would ask you nothing. Uh.
A deep shaft mining, by the way, I think is
usually rock salt is what they're producing there. And then
there's solution mining. Yeah, that's UM. Basically they take a
(33:47):
well over a salt bed and then inject water in
there and make a brine and then pump it up
from the underground as as a wet solution and into
a vacuum pan, which is gonna seal it up, and
they're gonna boil it and then evaporate it, which is
you know how they made salt back in the old
days too, They would you know, boil it and evaporate
(34:08):
it and then scrape the pan, right, So it's kind
of a modern version of that. Then they dry it
out and refine it, and then from there they're gonna
either add anti clumping agents or iodine, depending on what
you want. And then um, with solution mining, you've got
like a salt bed or a salt dome that's exposed
because it's somehow through tectonic action. Uh, an ancient seabed
(34:30):
or salt bed has been exposed to the above ground
like the surface of the Earth. Right, and then what's
what's the last one. Well, the old school solar method
um solar evaporation. This is when you have a salt
lake or seawater and wind in the sun cooperate with
the shallow pools and they leave salt behind and you
(34:53):
can only harvested about once a year, once it reaches
a certain level of harvestability, um of thickness and uh
something like we said, sometimes it's still done by hand,
even although it is industrialized in other places for sure.
But you know, they wash it, they clean it, they
drain it, but they leave the um a lot of
(35:14):
impurities in there. And this stuff is almost a percent
pure sodium chloride. It's good stuff. And like I said,
I used the Mediterranean version generally, but Australia is a
big on it too, on this method. And um, we
should probably mention also that salt has a lot of
religious significance. It's just a it's an ancient important thing
(35:36):
to mankind. Yeah, they would like use it to seal
important things. Yeah, in the Old Testament, which is pretty old. Uh,
Lot's wife, I believe her name is Sarah, was it
Sarah Ruth? Who was married a Lot turned into a
pillar of salt when she looked behind her. Even though,
guys that don't turn around, I'll turn you into a
pillar of salt. Yeah, and she did. And apparently there's
(35:57):
a there's a salt pillar at Mount ararat Um that's
called Lot's wife. People are like, that's her right there,
and who who uh is it? Buddhists that board off
evil with salt. Yes, um Umi has a little shaker
of salt that her mom put in her glove compartment
of her car. If they like flickr off on the
(36:20):
just a protector. Yeah that's nice. See I would have
eaten it. Yeah. Well that's why I don't let you ride.
That's right, one of several reasons they out of the bots,
you got anything else? I do? I have this good thing.
And there's a Roman senator named Cassio Doris and he said, quote,
mankind can live without gold, but not without salt. Who's
(36:42):
that cassio key boartists? Yet? Well you got Jerry again. Yeah,
she's giggly today. And I have a plug because here
in Atlanta there's a a lady who makes salts. But
if you go to Facebook and type in beauty, a
full briny sea salt go to her Facebook page and
(37:03):
click on the about thing. You will see her lovely homemade,
handcrafted salts. And my favorite is the magic unicorn. See
if this sounds good. Sea salt is of course the
main ingredient smoked paprika, lemon, garlic, rosemary, and celery seed.
Well it does sound good. It's delicious. You get some
(37:24):
broccoli and some cauliflower, some like beets and big chunks
of garlic, throw it out the window and buy a
steak and put this magical unicorn on it some olive oil,
sprinkle it with this stuff, bake it in the oven.
Delicious to go with that steak. You know. Yeah, magic
unicorn is my favorite. Uh. And the black Truffle salt
(37:44):
is delicious. And then she has one called camp Fire,
which is smoked salt with cumin and anto chili powder.
And uh, if you email info at Beautiful Briny Sea
Salt dot com you can order some of this stuff.
And I told Emily she's frind or as I said,
tell her, I'm gonna plugger, so she better get her
little fingers working, you know, nic start making some salt. Yeah,
(38:06):
because the stuff you should army is a salty crowd
So if you want to learn more about salt, I
don't know how you possibly could, but if you want
to look into it, you can type the word as
a LT into the search bar how stuff works dot
com and it will bring up this article how salt works.
And since I said search part, that means it's time
for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this. We should
(38:28):
apologize to cops. What do we do now? Well, this
cop wrote in and it well, I'll just read it.
Is it the police chase this one? Yeah? Yeah, they
didn't like that one. Hey guys, my name is Glenn.
I'm a police officer in southern California. I've been enjoying
the podcast for years. I suspect our political leanings made
different times, but I always enjoy learning and listening to
different points of view. Listen to the December sev Hunt podcast.
(38:52):
That's not the police chase one. You're right, but I
think it involves something like that. I felt it was
very accurate with the accept of some information you provided
about the l a p D. Um We batched the
l a p D before for their history of corruption.
They have a pretty thick history of corruption, but they're
not all bad. Ladies and men. Well, no, of course not. Um.
(39:12):
You mentioned that officers were super jumpy during the man
hunt for Christopher Dorner, which was a fair assessment. But
here's where you got something kind of wrong. Um. You
stated that the l a p D fired on two
uninvolved vehicles. It was the l a p D who
shot at one in the Torrent's Police Department shot at
the other. I could see how someone not from the
area might think they were l A p D. So
(39:34):
it's not the big of a deal. However, the bigger
mistake is that you stated that these shootings killed two people.
Nobody was killed, So I need to go back. I
saw in several places that at least two people were killed, Yeah,
accidentally from those shootings. I'll go back and look again. Okay,
but Glenn Josh takes issue. Sir, Well, he's not the
(39:54):
only one who's written in I just haven't gotten around
going back and looking and double checking. But I mean,
while we were re searching, I came across that and
it wasn't like on a forum or message board or something.
I think they were in articles. Okay, well, we'll get
to the bottom of it. Uh he was, Glenn says
I'm very surprised you would make such a statement without
doing your own work. I did my homework. You typically
appear to go to great links to fact check. Sometimes
(40:17):
you get the feeling you guys are not the biggest
fans of law enforcement. UM not. And I even recognize
my profession shortcomings for sure, just like you, though. I
want facts um influencing the show, not personal opinions. And
this email was not intended to justify the actions of
those two police departments. Just to set the record straight, understood,
And despite the goof and the cop bashing ha ha,
I still love the show. That's from Glenn Um and Glenn,
(40:41):
I don't hate cops. I love cops. Um. We've done
a lot of like super supportive shows on law enforcement,
name talks like The Law Enforcement Dude. But I don't
like jerks, And I think a lot of times people's
experience with cops or when they're pulled over and not
being helped by a cop, which is unfortunate because they
do much great work. But you know, when you get
(41:02):
pulled over and you're hassled by a jerk cop, you think, man,
what a jerk cop. It's like eating at a bad restaurant.
You know what I'm saying. Like restaurant, you tell one
or two people you have a bad experience at a restaurant,
you tell like twenty people. It's like fifty fold with cops.
So we have a lot of respect for law enforcement
for sure, for all they do. So I hope that
(41:24):
doesn't across come across is any differently nice, very excitful
to Yeah, thanks Glenn, Yeah, thank you Glenn. I'll go
back in double check. If I'm wrong, I'll admit it.
I just haven't had a chance to look again. We'll
give them twenty licks off of a black as vault
from a goat, and I might die of hyper natremia. Man,
(41:44):
that wrapped it all up right there. If you want
to get in touch with me and chuck to correct us,
take issue with something we said, whatever, um, you can
tweet to us at s Y s K Podcast. You
can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you
Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff
Podcast at Discovery dot com, and as always, check us
out at our cool home on the web, Stuff you
Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands
(42:10):
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Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and this is Stuff
you should Know the podcast. Oh yeah, Jerry's over there.
She's all laughy today for some reason. The salty dog.
(00:24):
Why did salty calling someone salty? I wonder where that
came from. I meant to look that up. It's someone
I didn't look up because you know, you're in a
salty nod. Yeah, I've said that plenty uh and once
that comes from like a salty dog. Here's here, this
is this is my idea. Okay, so salty described somebody
(00:45):
who is a little coarse, a little rough around the edges,
a little upset. Hear me out because their faces usually
puckered into like a a sour puss face. And what
makes your face pucker eating salt. So there's a salty person, okay,
I would call them lemony. Well, so take something with
(01:06):
a grain of salt. Actually ancient that's from the romans Um.
They would take poison with a grain of salt, or's
something that was hard to swallow with a grain of
salt to make it go down more easily. Okay, somebody
not being worth their salt. In this article it says
that um slaves were traded with salt, and if you
(01:26):
got your hands on like a slave, that wasn't worth
much Like that, he wasn't worth his salt. Is that
not the origin I found? The first reference in print
came from an eighteen oh five description or book about
an expedition to Guinea Bissau, and it mentions a guy
who wasn't worth his salt. He's a good man, Peter
(01:47):
Hale h a y eli um, but he wasn't worth
his salt, the guy said. And I looked it up
and I couldn't find that whether Hale was hired or
was a slave. But I got the impression that, Um,
what the guy was talking about wasn't that he had
traded salt for hail, but not worth the salt like
in his body. No, he was not worth the salt,
(02:10):
meaning a salary, which supposedly salary is rooted in the
idea of paying someone in salt, same with soldiers salt
dre and to give salt salad to The word salad
comes from the word salt, so salt is a it's
a it's an important thing. Historically speaking, there's been economies
(02:33):
largely based on salt. There have been um cultures rated
by other cultures because of salt. Um. If you were
an ancient salt producing area, probably the rulers control with
the tight grip um that salt production and salt distribution um.
(02:55):
And that actually carried on into the modern age when
the when Great Britain was occupying India, they had a
tight control on salt production there um. And actually Gandhi
started a revolution or helped along the revolution to overthrow
British imperial power through a salt protest. He walked two
(03:16):
hundred and forty miles to the coast where the salt
production facilities were and grabbed a bit of salty clay
and boiled it, boiled the salt out of it, which
was an illegal act, and that protests spurred other similar protests,
and the British were like, oh, hey, you can't do that, mate,
you can't mind your own salt. But he did because
(03:39):
he was Gandhi. It was called the Salt March to
Dandhi by gand by Gandhi. Uh yeah. Salt dates back
to sixty b C. And they actually found evidence of
salt trading in prehistoric times. So obviously it's used to
spice food is great, but it's used to preserve food.
Was super able, yeah back in the day and still today,
(04:02):
because salt is one of these things. You remember, Nature
loves homeostasis, it loves balance. If you introduce salt to
the mix, it kind of throws off that balance. So
to gain homeostasis, salt is introduced into say meat. It
likes to go into the meat, but it also draws
out the moisture, whether it's blood, water, whatever, so it
(04:24):
dries out the meat. It introduces the salt and it
draws out the moisture. That's right. That's called curing, which
preserves things because anytime bacteria comes in contact with that
salty meat, from that point on, the bacteria boom gets
dried out and dies. Yeah, that's why packaged foods are
still loaded with sodium. Unfortunately, I got some stuff on
(04:46):
that later. But it was used as a currency in
Ethiopia up until the twentieth century, and was used as
a form of suicide in China for nobility. They would
o d on salt and kill themselves. Oh yeah, because
it was expensive and very valuable. So nobility, that's like,
it was like a noble way to go out. And
we'll talk in a minute, like what happens when you
(05:08):
have too much salt? It's not very pleasant. It's not
very pleasant. But you know in medieval Europe, remember we
did the ten medieval torture devices this episode, well we
skipped one called the goats tongue, and it was apparently
a real thing, a tickle torture. They would dip your feet,
bringing a goat, and the goat would lick the bottom
of your feet and then they would dip it again.
(05:29):
And from that in the description, no, I'm saying like
it wasn't in there. Um from the description, apparently being
tortured tickle tortured was not pleasant. I would love to
have my feet looked by a goat. They would do
it until you did not love it. That was the
point of the goats tongue to it. Sounds like fun
(05:50):
to me. Uh. And the Middle Ages, salt was transported
along the notorious Old Salt Route and northern Germany. I
know what I'm gonna get you for Christmas, now, a
go in some salt water. I've had both at the
same time. I don't know, I didn't think about it. Uh,
it was played this big role in early America as well. Yeah,
(06:10):
Massachusetts Bay Colony had the first pattern to produce salt
here in the colonies, saltwater, and uh they did so
for two hundred years. Uh. The Erie Canal opened primarily
to transport salt. Yeah, they called it the ditch that
salt built. It sounds like something you just made up. No,
I swear I've been on the Erie Canal. Oh. Yeah, yeah,
(06:31):
they have this nice system of locks, and um, they
used to there's still like donkey trails from where the
donkeys used to pull these little flat bottom boats that
would carry salt and whatnot. And now yuppies walk along
those trails. Dog yuppies. A they're still yuppies. Oh yeah, thanks, Yeah,
(06:52):
I heard one the other day. Uh, dual income large
dog owner. All right. And the early salt was apparently
four times expensive as beef because salt was valuable obviously,
and we were allows you with beef. And in Civil
War salt played a big part in the Union strategy. Um,
(07:13):
there were quite a few battles fault over capturing salt
works and salt mines. Yeah, in Saltville, Virginia. Yeah, I
wonder what they do there. And it actually had a
big effect on the salt shortage on the Confederate troops. Yeah,
not just the troops, but the people behind the lines
back in the Confederate States were like, we want our salt,
and they had a huge impact on morale apparently, I
(07:34):
would say so. And the reason why salt is so important.
If you haven't gotten the impression that it is important
by now, you should rewind the podcast and just listen
to the last several minutes over again. Yeah, salt is
extraordinarily important because the human body requires it. It's something
that we need to survive and to live, so much
so that we actually have a taste sense for it.
(08:00):
It's the only you don't need better to live, or
sour or umami. As a matter of fact, things like
bitter and sour are there. I think to detect things
that we shouldn't be eating. Salt is to detect something
we need that's right and we can. Actually, this is
so mind blowing to me. I love the human body.
I think it's amazingly wonderful in ways that we don't
(08:23):
even fully understand yet. But consider this. When you need salt,
your body produces a craving in you for salt that
is awesome. Like I'm one of those believers. I I
don't follow it necessarily myself, but in a diet, well,
no thing, But in a diet where you just eat
what you crave, I think you can go off the
(08:45):
rails because I think that we uh have the wrong
things now. Yes, now, but if you could go back
a hundred fifty years, maybe I would bet you could
survive pretty easily and thrive on a diet where you
were just kind of led by your cravings, like oh
it need some megs and eat a couple of eggs, steak.
You don't know. You should pay attention to yourself, listen
(09:08):
to what your body is telling you, and I'll bet
you find that you do have specific cravings for specific moods,
foods that are like very simple meat like chuck go
eat a steak, Chuck go eat some eggs, like things
that are basic staples. I'll bet you'll notice you have
cravings salt. Uh. Let's let's break it down chemically. Um
(09:31):
it's sodium and chlorine are the two basic elements, and salt.
I think we all know this, which are electrolytes. That's right,
and we'll get into that in a minute. Um, sodium
is silvery white metal, and it is neither one of
these are like super friendly independently of one another. No,
you know, like especially chlorine. Yeah, sodium reacts violently if
(09:51):
you mix it with water and oxidizes in air. Chlorine
exists in gas at a room temperature. They're both really volatile.
But when you put them together and you have sodium chloride,
they make beautiful music, makes beautiful halite, uh, and beautiful music.
And sodium chloride is is about a sixty sodium to chloride,
(10:12):
by the way, is that right? Yeah? It makes little cubes, right, Yeah?
Is it? The molecules are cubicle, right. The sodium packs
in pretty tight, and then the chlorine fills in the
rest and they make tiny little cubes. It's actually reversed,
That's what I said. Yeah, the chloride is packed and
(10:34):
then the sodium fills in. But you know, I would
have thought the sodium was bigger. Oh well, Um, will
you have is an A C L. That's right? And
you mentioned electrolytes. Those are minerals that conduct electricity in
our body and our fluids and tissues, which is very
important important as muscle movement, we run on electricity. Heart
involuntary muscle UM moves through electrical impulse. I guess all
(10:59):
muscles do. Yeah, you want your eyes to blank, buddy? Yeah,
eat some salt, right, And so there's two conditions that
you can have conceivably well three, three would be just
all the systems are normal. But um, the other two
is too little salt and too much salt. And too
little salt is called hypoon atrema. Yeah, that's what that
lady died of the hold your WI for a week contest?
(11:21):
Oh is that right? Yeah? You can o d on water,
and I guess that's what you would ultimately die from.
Is hypone tremea their water toxicity. Um, if you have
too much water, you probably have too little salt, because
water flush is salt from your system is the method
that your kidneys use to maintain the balance of salt
(11:42):
and other electrolytes in your body. And that's why you
might drink gatorade if you're working out, because it has
electrolytes in it, right, exactly. You don't want to water
your crop land with it, though, as we found from
the movie Idiocracy. Yeah, and actually found too that in
the nineteen eighties there was a lot of controversy over
salting roads killing roadside vegetation. Well, yeah, for sure. I
(12:05):
mean like that, if you were into conquests and that
kind of thing, and you wanted to make sure that
the land you just occupied couldn't be used to grow
crops to feed an imposing armor army, you would plow
the land with salt. Salt the earth, yeah, which is
not the salt of the earth, because that means you're
a good fellah, but not a good fella because those
guys are salty. Wow, look at you. That was that
(12:28):
was a team effort. Clever wordplay, my friend. Uh. If
you take diuretics um or you have like massive diarrhea
for a period of days, or vomiting or some sort
of stomach bug, you might be at risk for hyponatremia. Yeah,
because you're flushing out all of this, all of your
electual lights. This is salt that your body needs. So
(12:50):
if it's out of balance, you're going to suffer things like, um, well,
an inability for your heart to beat, which is often fatal. Yea,
kidney problems, yeah, um on the other hand, you can
have hypernit tremia, which is too much salt, and like
you said, if you're a Chinese aristocrat, um, you may
die from hyper netremia. Yeah. They even had a m
(13:14):
man sometimes a blanket on word how to manual. Well,
it's sort of like how many grams of salt you
needed per pound in your body? That like a chart.
I guess if you want to kill yourself in China,
yours I you do it. Yeah, there's so much salt
you need? That was ro is he like that? Yeah?
I'm off today. No, you know, I'm a little off.
You were on my my microphone just swerved to the left,
(13:35):
but were happening. There's a ghost in here. Um, so
too much sodium, I think you said already is hypern
tremia instead of hypo hyper hyper hypo exactly. It's like glacemia,
but with no tremia exactly, and with hypernutremia. Basically, remember
how salt if you um, if you introduce it to say,
(13:58):
a jerky of some sort, it will dry it out. Yes,
it's just a shameful thing to do. Um. If you
introduce it to a meat or something like that, it's
going to dry it out because through osmosis in search
of homeostasis, um, it does the same thing to your
blood and your extracellular fluids. That salt will draw out
(14:22):
the fluids in your cells, but will maintain it in
your blood. It's water retention basically. Yeah, your kidneys, when
it has too much salt to deal with, kicks it
around the blood supply. Just like remember in the hangover
episode when you why drugs are so fatal when you
drink a lot of alcohol because your kidneys are trying
(14:43):
to process your the alcohol, so it keeps the drugs
just going around and around in your blood supply. Same
thing with too much salt. If your kidneys have too
much to deal with, they just keep the excess going
around in your blood. And since that salt is drawing
out all the excess moisture and increase is the volume
of your blood, which makes your blood pressure rise, which
makes your heart beat, yes, which supposedly logically would put
(15:09):
you at risk for a stroker heart attack, and that's
how you would die from hypernatremia. Yeah, I have high
blood pressure. Well, supposedly sodium. Cutting your sodium down isn't
going to help. Yeah, there's a lot of conflicting data
on that for sure. Um, well we'll get to nutrition soon.
We'll cover that. Well, how about before we move on,
do you want to do a message break? So chuck. Um.
(15:37):
They're like you said, there's a lot of controversy over
how much salt or how little salt you should have
on a daily basis in your diet. Yeah. Um, the
Heart National Heart, Blood and Long Institute say no more
than two point four grams of sodium. It's about a
teaspoon per day. Americans they found consume an average of
(15:59):
a about three point four per day, So that's one
gram too much on average. And um, you actually don't
need more than about a half a gram a day
if you want to maintain that stasis. So yeah, just
for your electro light intake. The thing is, though, um,
there was for many years because it makes sense that
(16:21):
if you're if too much salt increases your blood pressure,
then too much salt should be um, should put you
at risk for strokes and heart attacks. Right. Well, the
CDC panel surveyed material and all did and all all
sorts of studies that found no, cutting your sodium intake
doesn't really doesn't decrease your risk of heart attack or stroke.
(16:45):
And as a matter of fact, there is was it
just more hereditary. They don't know what it is. They
just know that basically below three thousand grams or three
thousand milligrams of salt and above seven thousand mill grams
of salt a day were two groups that were at
higher risk of heart attack. So if you have too
(17:06):
little salt, you're at higher risk of heart attack. To okay,
so try to keep it between three thousand and four
thousand milligrams three thousand and seven th The thing is
is they they don't They weren't comfortable making any recommendation.
They were just sayone scared, this is what we found.
Everyone scared, like, go on the record, yeah, because we
just don't know. Like, it doesn't make any sense that
(17:27):
you would have a heart attack if you ate less
than three grams of sault today. That that flies in
the face of of um conventional wisdom, and nobody's figured
out why yet. Interesting, Well, it's something you should monitor
at the very least, because I think a lot of
people look at fat grams and calories and all that
stuff is great to look at nutritionally, but um, when
you start poking around on the soup can and you see, Wow,
(17:50):
this chicken noodle soup has milligrams of sodium, but it's
so good. And this one little can which is almost
a gram of sodium, yeah close to it. A quarter
pounder with bacon and cheese. You didn't do Big Max,
Now I should have been communist. I think Big Max.
Actually I did see this is milligrams. The big Mac
(18:12):
I think was around leven pounds more. With the bacon.
I think they have like a whole bacon onion ranch
or something topping that you can put on quarter pounders.
Now I've not yet tried this, but like I think
about it from time to time, like right now, yeah,
right now, especially uh so at anyway, just give it
(18:35):
a look. Like soups are notoriously high in sodium. Package
foods are notoriously high in sodium. Um, don't just think
about the table salt that you use, Like, oh, I
didn't salt my food that much today. You need a
lot of package food or eating a lot of sodium. Yeah,
and nobody can tell you how much you should be
eating or shouldn't be eating. But like you said, it's
good to just pay attention to that kind of thing,
because you probably are eating a lot more than you realize,
(18:56):
and you should be eating a lot of package food anyway,
I'll just go ahead and say that, so um chuck, Yes,
what kinds of salt are there? Well, first of all,
I should say I love salt to Salt and pepper
are my favorite two spices. I'm from the South, have
a taste for salt um and pork fat. Yeah that's
(19:17):
pretty southern too, Yeah for sure. Uh So I love salt.
I like good Mediterranean sea salt. That's what I used
at my house. Uh and I'm gonna plug this local saltier.
I just made that word up oh later in the show. Okay,
But um, I'm a big salt fan. I like salt too.
I like sweet, I like ummi, I like um sour.
(19:40):
I'm training myself to like bitter through the use of kampari. Yeah.
Like I I've found out that I'm a bitter super taster. So,
like things that seem like normal to other people are
like really bitter to me. Like one example, fruit, Yeah,
but it's like like it just gustingly bitter to me.
(20:01):
Like I can't understand how the rest of humanity eats
grape fruit. I don't like grapefruit. Well, maybe you're a
bitter super taster too, But I have to tell you this,
I've trained myself to like um, grapefruit and coompari just
by exposure, like I've come to appreciate them. With campari,
it's a bar like a bitter DIGESTI for Appritif you
(20:21):
do like a campari and soda, it's in a negrowning right. Oh,
I think I've seen people like if their stomachs upset
or is that bitters and soda? Well, campari is a
type of bitters. It's not that super compact bitters like angustura,
but it is a type of bitter. I think it's
a DIGESTI Okay, it's good stuff anyway. I like salt.
What I'm really saying there is I like well seasoned food.
(20:43):
And if you're a chef or a home chef, you
know that salt is important to cooking, super important and
baking obviously, but bland food can't do it. No, what's
the point. What is the point? Agreed? Types of salt,
well start with table salt and and like man, if
your if your doctor put you on like a bland
(21:06):
food diet, I feel for you. But there's stuff out
there you can eat. There's spike, there's Mrs Dash, there's
you should be seasoning your food to some extent, like
bland food is is like it's bland life. Yeah. They
even have the imitation salt of the New and New salt.
I didn't do any research on that, but I've bought
(21:26):
it before. You do you like it? I didn't use
it that much, but it's it exists in my home
thanks to the empty thing of Mediterranean sea salt. Yeah,
all right, it's the table salt is the first one
we should cover. That's the traditional um either iodized or
non iodized, fine grained salt that you see in many
(21:49):
many homes and restaurants, and it's IDEs. They did a
little research into this. Did you look up iodie salt? Yeah, well,
I mean I know that they they added it because
at one point it was like fluoride. They thought, well,
we need this in a good place to put it
in salt. Yeah, because most people use salt, and we'll
just put it into table salt because it's an easy additive.
(22:09):
But um, there was a real problem with hyper thyroidism,
things like Goiter's mental retardation. UM just poor fetal development
linked to um iodine deficiency. So they put it in salt,
and apparently there it's considered to be responsible for this
thing called the Flynn effect, which there was like a
(22:31):
three i Q point rise in the middle of the
twentieth century in western nations and nobody could figure out
what it is. And they think now that it was
because they added iodine to salt, and so it had
the aggregate effect of raising our i Q by um
preventing poor fetal development. Yeah. Well, it's still a problem
(22:52):
in other parts of the world, just not here in
North America, right, other parts of the world that don't
have IDI salt. You know, dumb they are. Oh man,
that was terrible. I'm just kidding. You need to apologize
to the rest of the world. I'm sorry everybody. Uh So,
like I said, table saw, this is the most common salt. Uh.
They remove all the impurities. Um. They have things in
(23:13):
there to make it not clump and stick together, and
so it pours freely, so even when it rains, it pours. Well,
should we get to that. Yeah, don't you have something
on that? Yeah? The UM I just for some reason
thought of the Morton salt girl, and like every great
advertising story, they were like, how do we It was
sort of a new thing at the time, in nineteen
(23:33):
eleven two package salt this way in a container with
a spout. How they package it before? I don't know,
the blocks, probably like a deer like or something. I'm
not sure actually, but I know that this was a
fairly revolutionary product to package it like this and process
it like this. Um So the agency was um In
(23:56):
w Air and Company, and Don Draper walks in and says,
they've got twelve proposals for you, which one do you like?
And Sterling Morton of the Morton Company, of course, it's
always someone else, like his son or his wife or something.
It was his son in secretary. Um pointed toward one
of the ads with a little girl holding the umbrella
(24:17):
and said this is the one, And he said, you
know what, I think you guys are right. The whole
story is right there in the picture. Because the whole
point was this salt doesn't clump when it rains at poors,
and the little girls can't be trusted to be sent
to the store by themselves because they ruin all the salt.
Keeping the nozzle open on the way home. Uh. Some
(24:38):
of the different um slogans they had was flows freely,
runs freely, pours, it never rains, but it pours. And
then they finally settled on when it rains at poors. Yeah,
that's the best because it never rains but it pors.
Doesn't make any sense. They probably fired that person. And
she's been updated one to three, four five times. Oh
(25:00):
really yeah, the last time in nineteen sixty eight and
she's been the same since then. And there was never
a real model for that girl. That's a question they
often get. She totally made up. Yeah, because he was like,
it's Morton's granddaughters. What you know, you want to thank
Selma Selma Morton. So that is the story of the Sken.
(25:20):
That's an old timing name. If ever there was one
that's a college right, No, it's like a person's name. Well,
it's a college too. Had a friend that played soccer
there e r s k I ny there's a college
named Colgate too. It's like crazy to me, Uh, Sea
Salt Sir is next. Uh. It's gonna cost you some
(25:43):
more money because of several reasons, one of which if
they go old school and In some parts of France,
they still harvest the stuff by hand, which is pretty cool.
You might see it called flair to sell, which is
French for flower of salt, and uh, it's not processed
like table salt is. So you're gonna have a lot
of those trace minerals. It's gonna be coarse and flaky,
(26:05):
and it colors it too. It can for sure, like
you can have white sea salt, pink, black, gray, or
a combination of them. Pink salts are traditionally associated with
him alay and salt um, and there the pink is
often for the result of things like copper or iron
or apparently um. There's a type that contains an algae,
(26:29):
a salt tolerant algae, which would make it an extreme
aphile um. That gives it has the beta caroteen pigment
in it, and that gives it a pinkish hue. That salt.
You're eating algae, pink algae in your salt, which is
pretty neat. That is pretty neat, and that that's Hawaiian, right.
A lot of times Hawaii has a different one and alaya,
(26:52):
Oh I read that as algae, Yeah, I did too.
A couple of times and I was like, why would
they separate these two out there's no g No, it's
a Hawaiian Alaya salt has iron oxide in it from
the volcanoes. Oh, that makes sense. And WHOI also produces
black salt too from the lava. Yeah, in a little
bit of charcoal. I'll have to try some of those actually,
and yeah, and then there's gray salts to um, which
(27:14):
is uh, there's cell gree which is from France. And
then smoked salt is also gray, where they just take
some salt and smoke it. Yeah, they put it over
a smoky fire, and you have smoked salt. Do you
like smoky foods sometimes? Yeah, it could be a little
overbearing for me at times. Yeah, in the hands of
you know, I guess somebody who knows what they're doing
(27:35):
with the smoked It's like, I like a good smoked meat,
little day type of thing, but not necessarily like you know,
when they add like artificial smoke in the kitchen to
it to a meal. You know what I'm saying. Although
smoked cheese is good, oh yeah, man, good smokey. And
thanks to fan Hillary Lozar from for sending us some
(27:57):
great cheese. Yeah, that was very good to you. I
had some of that smoked goody yesterday. Actually when I
got home, I haven't had it yet. Is it good?
And as soon as I walked in the door, I
got a knife out. It's like, I gotta try this stuff.
Yeah's delicious anyway, Thanks Hilary. Um So, chefs and Gormond's
will say sea salt is what you want to be
using because you're gonna get a unique flavor from those
(28:20):
minerals that are not in table salt. I agree with them.
It's tough to bake with though, Yeah, it's tough to measure.
You get a lot more precise measuring, for sure from
table salt. And they don't recommend you bake with sea salt, no,
because baking is a specific chemical reaction. Cooking is different. Yeah,
they say that they most chefs don't cook with sea salt,
(28:41):
but they will just add it as a topper. But
I've cooked with sea salt and I have no plenty
of chefs that cooked with sea salt, So I disagree
with that. Um Well, they with the topper, they mean
like it's a finishing salt. It brings out like all
the flavors if you sprinkle it on them. Yeah, I
mean it's definitely used, but I've also seen it used
in the food right so well, that leads us to
kash your salt. Apparently some people like to cook with
(29:02):
kosher salt. And if you are using following a recipe
and you're switching out the whatever amount of salt is
called for, you want to double it because kasher salt
is larger, coarse grained salt. And here to me is
a fact of the podcast, want to several Kosher salt
is not necessarily kosher itself. It's used to make things kosher.
(29:26):
That I didn't. I thought kasher salt was like salt
that had been blessed by a rabbi or something. Really
I never understood it, but now I do. It's it's
salt they used to make things kosher. If you use
table salt UH to make something kosher, it's not gonna work.
Kasher salt because it's large and coarse grained. UH makes
meat kosher by drawing the blood out because eating blood
(29:46):
ain't kosher. So if you salt it with kosher salt,
it's gonna draw the blood out of the meat. Then bam,
you have a kosher cut of steak baby boom. And
it's not iodized either, right by the way. Um. And
then we have the redheaded step child of the salt family,
rock salt, which is used. Um. It's got a lot
(30:07):
of impurities, it's unrefined, it's very large grained, and it's
used to melt ice on roads and sidewalks and to
make homemade ice cream. Yeah, and probably some other stuff.
But do you know of any other uses? I think
rock salts used in um, some chemical productions. That makes sense. Um,
(30:27):
if you want to make a good industrial brine, rock
salts your your man. Yeah, alright, salt mining, that's how
you get salt, because it is a natural thing that
exists in the earth. UM. The largest producer of salt
these days, no surprise, is China. UM. In two thousand
twelve they produced about sixty five million tons. The US
(30:49):
is not too far behind a forty four million. Then
you've got Germany, India and Australia as the other leading
top five salt producers these days. In India gets the
profit from in salt production thanks to Gandhi. I guess so,
huh that's pretty neat. And think about that. The number
four on the list. Yeah, and they weren't even allowed
(31:10):
to produce it not so long ago. No, they were
allowed to produce it, but all the money went to Yeah,
okay jerks. So there's three types of mining main three
main types. There's deep shaft mining, solar evaporation, and solution mining.
And deep shaft mining is basically like any other type
of mining, where you just um, drill a shaft down
(31:34):
into a mine, which an underground sea bed is what
where the salt is, right, that's where you get your salt. Um. Yeah,
that's I think that's one of the facts of the podcast. Yeah,
they're ancient underground seabed, ancients beds that dried up and
the salt remained and they formed, um these basically salt
deposits that can be dozens or hundreds of feet thick
(31:57):
and massively wide, and you drill down into these things.
You create a couple of shafts, and then they usually
use what's called a room and pillar system, which really helps.
It's very difficult to explain, but if you see a
picture of it it makes perfect sense. But um, you're
basically creating a checkerboard pattern going down in mining. The
(32:21):
salt deposits so you leave it right, Yeah, you blast
a room, but you leave a couple of adjacent rooms
for support and then um, eventually you've you've mined out
all the salt and then you fill it with industrial waste.
That is one thing they do. So that's deep shaft mining. Yeah.
And they'll remove the salt there and crush it and
(32:42):
uh pull it to the service and further process it
from there, depending on what kind of salts you want
in the end. Right. And there's this awesome mine um
called the Wheelishka Salt Mine in Cracow, Poland, and it
has a full on cathedral made out of salt. Amazing.
They have several like chapels, but then a full cathedral
(33:04):
um and it's all made us salts in this old
salt mine that's not a UNESCO site um. And they
went to the trouble of boiling salt. It was a
table salt mine. They would boil this raw salt and
purify it and then use that purified salt to make
crystal chandeliers out of salt. Like, the whole cathedral is
(33:24):
just salt. It's amazing looking man. Yeah, check it out.
No goats allowed. They would recap it or no chucks allowed,
just walk around like licking stuff. They would ask you nothing. Uh.
A deep shaft mining, by the way, I think is
usually rock salt is what they're producing there. And then
there's solution mining. Yeah, that's UM. Basically they take a
(33:47):
well over a salt bed and then inject water in
there and make a brine and then pump it up
from the underground as as a wet solution and into
a vacuum pan, which is gonna seal it up, and
they're gonna boil it and then evaporate it, which is
you know how they made salt back in the old
days too, They would you know, boil it and evaporate
(34:08):
it and then scrape the pan, right, So it's kind
of a modern version of that. Then they dry it
out and refine it, and then from there they're gonna
either add anti clumping agents or iodine, depending on what
you want. And then um, with solution mining, you've got
like a salt bed or a salt dome that's exposed
because it's somehow through tectonic action. Uh, an ancient seabed
(34:30):
or salt bed has been exposed to the above ground
like the surface of the Earth. Right, and then what's
what's the last one. Well, the old school solar method
um solar evaporation. This is when you have a salt
lake or seawater and wind in the sun cooperate with
the shallow pools and they leave salt behind and you
(34:53):
can only harvested about once a year, once it reaches
a certain level of harvestability, um of thickness and uh
something like we said, sometimes it's still done by hand,
even although it is industrialized in other places for sure.
But you know, they wash it, they clean it, they
drain it, but they leave the um a lot of
(35:14):
impurities in there. And this stuff is almost a percent
pure sodium chloride. It's good stuff. And like I said,
I used the Mediterranean version generally, but Australia is a
big on it too, on this method. And um, we
should probably mention also that salt has a lot of
religious significance. It's just a it's an ancient important thing
(35:36):
to mankind. Yeah, they would like use it to seal
important things. Yeah, in the Old Testament, which is pretty old. Uh,
Lot's wife, I believe her name is Sarah, was it
Sarah Ruth? Who was married a Lot turned into a
pillar of salt when she looked behind her. Even though,
guys that don't turn around, I'll turn you into a
pillar of salt. Yeah, and she did. And apparently there's
(35:57):
a there's a salt pillar at Mount ararat Um that's
called Lot's wife. People are like, that's her right there,
and who who uh is it? Buddhists that board off
evil with salt. Yes, um Umi has a little shaker
of salt that her mom put in her glove compartment
of her car. If they like flickr off on the
(36:20):
just a protector. Yeah that's nice. See I would have
eaten it. Yeah. Well that's why I don't let you ride.
That's right, one of several reasons they out of the bots,
you got anything else? I do? I have this good thing.
And there's a Roman senator named Cassio Doris and he said, quote,
mankind can live without gold, but not without salt. Who's
(36:42):
that cassio key boartists? Yet? Well you got Jerry again. Yeah,
she's giggly today. And I have a plug because here
in Atlanta there's a a lady who makes salts. But
if you go to Facebook and type in beauty, a
full briny sea salt go to her Facebook page and
(37:03):
click on the about thing. You will see her lovely homemade,
handcrafted salts. And my favorite is the magic unicorn. See
if this sounds good. Sea salt is of course the
main ingredient smoked paprika, lemon, garlic, rosemary, and celery seed.
Well it does sound good. It's delicious. You get some
(37:24):
broccoli and some cauliflower, some like beets and big chunks
of garlic, throw it out the window and buy a
steak and put this magical unicorn on it some olive oil,
sprinkle it with this stuff, bake it in the oven.
Delicious to go with that steak. You know. Yeah, magic
unicorn is my favorite. Uh. And the black Truffle salt
(37:44):
is delicious. And then she has one called camp Fire,
which is smoked salt with cumin and anto chili powder.
And uh, if you email info at Beautiful Briny Sea
Salt dot com you can order some of this stuff.
And I told Emily she's frind or as I said,
tell her, I'm gonna plugger, so she better get her
little fingers working, you know, nic start making some salt. Yeah,
(38:06):
because the stuff you should army is a salty crowd
So if you want to learn more about salt, I
don't know how you possibly could, but if you want
to look into it, you can type the word as
a LT into the search bar how stuff works dot
com and it will bring up this article how salt works.
And since I said search part, that means it's time
for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this. We should
(38:28):
apologize to cops. What do we do now? Well, this
cop wrote in and it well, I'll just read it.
Is it the police chase this one? Yeah? Yeah, they
didn't like that one. Hey guys, my name is Glenn.
I'm a police officer in southern California. I've been enjoying
the podcast for years. I suspect our political leanings made
different times, but I always enjoy learning and listening to
different points of view. Listen to the December sev Hunt podcast.
(38:52):
That's not the police chase one. You're right, but I
think it involves something like that. I felt it was
very accurate with the accept of some information you provided
about the l a p D. Um We batched the
l a p D before for their history of corruption.
They have a pretty thick history of corruption, but they're
not all bad. Ladies and men. Well, no, of course not. Um.
(39:12):
You mentioned that officers were super jumpy during the man
hunt for Christopher Dorner, which was a fair assessment. But
here's where you got something kind of wrong. Um. You
stated that the l a p D fired on two
uninvolved vehicles. It was the l a p D who
shot at one in the Torrent's Police Department shot at
the other. I could see how someone not from the
area might think they were l A p D. So
(39:34):
it's not the big of a deal. However, the bigger
mistake is that you stated that these shootings killed two people.
Nobody was killed, So I need to go back. I
saw in several places that at least two people were killed, Yeah,
accidentally from those shootings. I'll go back and look again. Okay,
but Glenn Josh takes issue. Sir, Well, he's not the
(39:54):
only one who's written in I just haven't gotten around
going back and looking and double checking. But I mean,
while we were re searching, I came across that and
it wasn't like on a forum or message board or something.
I think they were in articles. Okay, well, we'll get
to the bottom of it. Uh he was, Glenn says
I'm very surprised you would make such a statement without
doing your own work. I did my homework. You typically
appear to go to great links to fact check. Sometimes
(40:17):
you get the feeling you guys are not the biggest
fans of law enforcement. UM not. And I even recognize
my profession shortcomings for sure, just like you, though. I
want facts um influencing the show, not personal opinions. And
this email was not intended to justify the actions of
those two police departments. Just to set the record straight, understood,
And despite the goof and the cop bashing ha ha,
I still love the show. That's from Glenn Um and Glenn,
(40:41):
I don't hate cops. I love cops. Um. We've done
a lot of like super supportive shows on law enforcement,
name talks like The Law Enforcement Dude. But I don't
like jerks, And I think a lot of times people's
experience with cops or when they're pulled over and not
being helped by a cop, which is unfortunate because they
do much great work. But you know, when you get
(41:02):
pulled over and you're hassled by a jerk cop, you think, man,
what a jerk cop. It's like eating at a bad restaurant.
You know what I'm saying. Like restaurant, you tell one
or two people you have a bad experience at a restaurant,
you tell like twenty people. It's like fifty fold with cops.
So we have a lot of respect for law enforcement
for sure, for all they do. So I hope that
(41:24):
doesn't across come across is any differently nice, very excitful
to Yeah, thanks Glenn, Yeah, thank you Glenn. I'll go
back in double check. If I'm wrong, I'll admit it.
I just haven't had a chance to look again. We'll
give them twenty licks off of a black as vault
from a goat, and I might die of hyper natremia. Man,
(41:44):
that wrapped it all up right there. If you want
to get in touch with me and chuck to correct us,
take issue with something we said, whatever, um, you can
tweet to us at s Y s K Podcast. You
can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you
Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff
Podcast at Discovery dot com, and as always, check us
out at our cool home on the web, Stuff you
Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands
(42:10):
of other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com. This
episode of Stuff You Should Know is brought to you
by Linda dot Com. Linda dot com offers thousands of engaging,
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