November 25, 2025 • 55 mins
Have you ever thrown a pinch of spilled salt over your left shoulder? Or said to someone “well, take his opinion with a grain of salt”? Or looked up the potential salary of a job listing? Salt is so deeply embedded in our cultures, our languages, our history as a species that we often take its influence for granted. We may forget (or perhaps we never knew) how much history is held within the unassuming yet ubiquitous salt shaker. In the first installment of this two-parter on everyone’s favorite seasoning, we delve deep into some salt lore. When did humans start to ramp up their salt intake? Why was salt such a big deal? Which places are named for salt? When did we start worrying about how much sodium we were eating? Tune in for a fun, fact-filled episode that’ll forever change the way you think about salt.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The so called liquomen is made. In this manner, the
intestines of fish are thrown into a vessel and salted.
Small fish, either the best smelt or small mullet or
sprats or wolffish, or whatever is deemed to be small,
are all salted together and shaken frequently, and are fermented
in the sun. After it has been reduced in the heat,
(00:23):
garam is obtained from it. In this way, a large,
strong basket is placed into the vessel of the aforementioned fish,
and the garum streams into the basket. In this way,
the so called liquimen is strained through the basket. When
it is shaken up, the remaining refuse is alec Next,
if you wish to use the garum immediately, that is
(00:44):
to say, not fermented in the sun, but to boil it,
you do it this way when the brine has been
tested so that an egg having been thrown in floats
if it sinks it is not sufficiently salty, and throwing
the fish into the brine in a newly made earthen
way pot and adding in some oregano, you place it
on a sufficient fire until it is boiled, that is,
(01:06):
until it begins to reduce a little, some throw and
boiled down must unfermented wine. Next throwing the cooled liquid
into a filter. You toss it a second and a
third time through the filter until it turns out clear.
After having covered it, store it away.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
So did you like that? What is happening at home?
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Instructions to make this fishy salty, fishy sauce called garum
that's like was very popular in ancient Rome. That recipe
comes from I mean, the original recipes are probably hundreds
of years earlier, but that one comes from nine hundred
CE from a Greek agricultural manual.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
I have so many questions, like what what why?
Speaker 1 (02:53):
I mean, who doesn't love a little salty sauce on there?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
A little sauce. So it's the sauce, so you're not
going to eat the fish. It's like the sauce part
that you're keeping. I mean it's it's also like made
from fishy, fishy. You're salting the fish, but it's this,
it's the filter. It's the filterrait that you're keeping.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, but I imagine it it tastes fishy, fishy, yeah yeah, yeah,
it's like.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Fish sauce.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
I mean, I don't know what it tastes like.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
But I I mean, should we try it? I would
love to. I love fish sauce, so me too could
be good.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yeah, this is going to be a couple of weird episodes.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I'm really excited about it.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh and I'm Aaron aman Updyke and
this is this podcast will kill you.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
It's getting weird. But we're talking about Salt. Salt, Salt.
This all starts two episodes. Honestly, though, like I think
it ended up it started. We've been through a roller
coaster of feelings about Salt throughout the process. The making
of it started because I was like, I bought the
(04:04):
book Salt. I found it at a thrift store and
I was like, I've been wanting to read this book
for a while.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
And I was like, I basically strong armed you into
doing two episodes on Salt.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
It's accurate.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
And then I was like I don't want to do
this anymore, and you were like, no, I found a
good story, Let's do this. And I was like okay,
and then I was like, oh cool, Actually Salt is
really interesting.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah. Really, we went back and forth several times, had
some regrets, came through it.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah, I think we'll have no regrets at the end
of it.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
No, I'm already like really stoked for today. I am too.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
I am too. We do have some business to get
out of the way first.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yeah, should we like warn people what these two episodes
are going to be about. Oh, yeah, that's probably a
good idea.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah, the first episode, so today, what I'm going to
be talking about is kind of the historical aspects of salt,
like why when did we start using it as much
as we did? And some just like honestly, you're gonna
be well equipped to hit up the next Trivia night
if there are any questions about salt.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I love that. I'm really I hope there's a whole
salt based section in your next Trivia Day.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
That wouldn't that be If there is, please let us know.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
That would be so great.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
And then you next episode, Aaron, tell them what you're
going to be talking about.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
I'm going to talk about salt and our health. There
you go, broadly, very very broadly speaking.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I'm excited for this because I feel like there is
so much noise.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Yes, okay, but you're right, we have some business first.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Quarantiny times, Quarantiny time I love how it's turned from
like a fun thing that we do to business.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
It is business, the business portion of it.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
We're drinking grains of salt.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Grains of salt because there's a lot.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Of the history of salt that you should take with
a grain of salt, and there's definitely aspects of the
current salt debate today you should take some grains of
salt with yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Or maybe not a or not. And the grains of
salt is based on.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
A cocktail that you know has been established for a
while that has salt in the name.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
It's called the Salty Dog. The Salty Dog, which we
also done this before. Maybe it's fine, it's fine, we're
calling it something new.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah, I feel like after one hundred something episodes we
are allowed to repeat if we Yeah, if we try
our hardest not to.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Do whatever we want.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
It's grapefruit juice and either vodka or gin, whatever your pick,
and the assaulted rim. Yeah, it's pretty simple.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Pretty simple, pretty dilish. Yeah, we'll post the full recipe
on our website. This podcast will kill you. Nope, we
don't do that anymore.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
We're gonna try though Aaron List site.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
This podcast with Killara dot com and all of our
social media is where you will definitely see it there, yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Also on our website you can find all sorts of things,
from transcripts to links to our bookshop dot org affiliate page,
our Goodreads lists. You can find links to merch You
can find oh man who does a link to a
first hand account, form contact us form stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Everything? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Anything else? Or can we just get started?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Tell me about salt erin I can't wait too.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Okay, let's take a quick break and then I'll get
right to it. Aaron, I love salt.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
I know you did.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Like you've seen me eat French fries like I'm salting
and already very salty food. It's not good or is it?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Or I guess we'll find out more next week.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
No, I think it's I think it's not good. I
think it's bad. But despite knowing this, despite knowing that
it's probably not great, that I'm salting things and eating
a lot of salt, I want more of it. I
feel like I need salt. I crave salt, and it
might occasionally be the case that I do actually need
to replenish some salt, Like maybe I'm do a long
(08:36):
run in the heat, or I'm working outside all day
and I'm sweating out lots of salt. But in general,
nowadays we eat a whole lot more salt than we
need to like make up for, right, Like we're able
to make up the salt that we lose pretty easily. Yeah,
But what does enough salt mean? Like, what does it
(08:58):
mean in a biological sense? I mean, and I'm not
going to answer that question, but the answer does vary
from person to person, I think in general, and there
are guidelines that also help to determine what enough is.
These guidelines have, of course, undergone some shifts in the
past few decades. In his book Salt, a World History,
(09:20):
author Mark Kurlanski writes that the average human contains about
two hundred and fifty grams of salt, So that.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Statistic, right, which is enough to fill?
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Just to visualize this, a couple a few standard sized salt.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Shakers, yeah, yeah, like the little ones you have on
your dinner table salty.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Whenever we lose salt, which we're constantly doing through bodily
functions like sweating or peeing, we need to consume more
to replenish what we've lost. If we don't, in extreme cases,
we do run the risk of our bodies shutting down. Basically,
salt is essential for life, and when I say salt,
I am referring to the dietary salt that we think of,
(10:03):
mostly sodium chloride, the stuff that we consume, not salt
is in like the broad chemical term for when an
acid combines with a base.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I have like the same disclaimer episode too.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Like just I know someone's gonna be like, excuse me,
salt is actually quite a broad term. Yeah, I know,
but I'm talking about salt, like talking about sodium sodium. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
I also don't know how you would approach a history
of like salt in the broad chemical sense.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
I don't know. You learned about ions and.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
I guess sure, I mean, but to be honest, like,
I'm also still grappling with how you approach a history
of table salt like sodium chloride. Salt because it has
had and it continues to have, such a profound influence
throughout so much of our species, evolutionary and written history.
Salt has held symbolic and religious significance. It has shaped
(11:00):
human settlement, It has led to revolutions, It has been
used as a commodity, a currency, and as a medicine.
Salt has held the key to some nation's prosperity and
the downfall of others. It's some pretty powerful stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah, sounds like it, right.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
But now, when you can saunter into any grocery store
and pick up a jar of the stuff for pennies,
you might not be awestruck by the wonder of salt.
In fact, you might instead be shopping for low sodium alternatives.
How can I get less of this stuff?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
How can I avoid this? Right?
Speaker 1 (11:37):
But that would blow the minds of time travelers from
almost any other point in history prior to the twentieth century. Really,
what do you mean you don't want salt in your food?
What do you mean salt is so cheap? These days,
we don't think twice about whether or not we'll have
access to salt. If anything, our primary concern when it
comes to salt is how to eat less of it
(11:58):
for our health. That wasn't the case for most of
human history. One of the things that I love about
microhistories is how they always make the case for like
this thing, this subject, this invention, this incident, this one
point in history holds the key to everything. It explains everything.
(12:21):
But with salt, though, I'm like kind of convinced you
buy it. I'm buying it. I'm buying it. All animals
need salt. How much they need and where they get
it from depends on the species.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Or the individual.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
And next week, Arin, you'll do this the honor of
talking about how much we humans need, maybe, which, as
we'll see, is a very contentious issue, much more so
than I realized. But for now, I want to tell
you where humans got salt and what we did with it,
what we used to do with it. Salt occurs naturally
in all sorts of forms, right. It's in salt water
(12:59):
the ocean and seas, in salt springs, in salt deposits underground,
like rock salt in the crusts of dried salty lakes.
We can consume or harvest salt directly from these sources,
and we can also get salt from eating the things
that also take in salt, like, for instance, animals. Right, So,
(13:20):
early humans got a good proportion of their salt from
the wild game that they killed, including both like eating
consuming the meat of animals and their blood like drinking
the blood or using the blood to make other dishes exactly, yeah,
or we got salt from fish or other marine life
for those that were living closer to the coasts. But
(13:42):
as humans started to settle in larger groups and develop agriculture,
diet shifted to include proportionally more grains and vegetables, which
are generally speaking, much lower in salt than animal products. Fortunately,
domesticated livestock like sheep, pigs, and cattle fall close behind
the development of agriculture, making them a handy, close by
(14:05):
source of salt. One paper I read suggested that livestock
domestication was actually helped along because the wild ancestors of
these animals were drawn to human settlements by the salt
content of human urine. They would be attracted to human settlements.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Interesting, right, So then it made it easier to domesticate
them because they're like coming over anywhere anyway.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Maybe they're getting used to humans, you know, like yeah, yeah,
I mean I don't know, and I don't know how
you would like actually measure that in any capacity, but yeah,
but it's a fun idea, yeah, and so and also
I think it's like which animals would be drawn to that,
So I mentioned earlier. How some animals need more salt
(14:49):
than others, or they vary in how they get it.
The general rule that I saw mentioned was that carnivores
tend to get their salt from their prey because the
bodies of animals contain lot more salt than like grasses
and veggies and whatnot, and so herbivores will often supplement
with naturally occurring sources of salt, like salt licks. Here's
(15:11):
my big reveal. So I have the sweatshirt on.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Oh my god, stop, did you have like something covering it?
Speaker 1 (15:20):
It's a little post it that's ramen. It's like, yeah,
instant ramen post it.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
That's so good on so many levels. Oh wait where
their sweatshirts from?
Speaker 1 (15:33):
So my sweatshirt is a place that I have taken
you erin.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
It is called.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Big Bone Lick State Historic Site. We call it Big
Bone Lick State Park. Growing up Bone Baby Big Bone Lick.
So this is in northern Kentucky. Yes, that is the
actual name of it. Yes, I am wrapping a sweatshirt
that also has a wooly mammoth on it.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I wish you could see it better. Your mic isn't
exactly the wrong spot.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Can you see it now?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
There? It is chuck it out.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
It's red, it is red, and it's It's called Big
Bone Leake State Park because there are old salt licks
that prehistoric megafauna used to come to for salt. There
are so many lots of fossils of things like mammoth,
ground sloths, et cetera there, and it's known. I'm like,
it's so thrilling to talk about Big.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Bone State Park.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
It's known as the birthplace of American vertebrate paleontology because
of all of these fossils.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
That have been found there.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
And it's funny too, a lot of the fossils that
were found are actually reside in other countries because it
was like in the seventeen hundreds and so and so
they're all just being shipped out to other places eighteen hundreds.
But also it's I just have to mention it is
in fairly close proximity to the Creation Museum, which I
(16:51):
just find particularly a little you know, rich irony.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
A little on the nose.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Yeah, it is. But also at Big Bone Lick State
Park State Historic Site, there is an annual salt festival
that is held there. I've only been once but I
remember some of the salt making demonstrations. It's really cool.
It happens around mid October if I remember correctly, So
if you're in the area next year, you should definitely
(17:17):
check it out. Anyway, that's my little plug for State Park. Yes,
there's a put putt, the free put putt course. We
go there all the time. Anyway, back to salt licks
and animals and domestication, you can also see this happening now.
So for instance, if you here in Colorado, if you
drive up to Mount Blue Sky, often the goats will
(17:40):
come and to your cars and lick the salt off
of your cars.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Yeah, and it's not like these these mountain goats are
on their way to domestication, just that animals are drawn
to salt, as are humans. Many early human settlements were
situated close to sources of salt, you know, salty springs,
salty lakes, underground deposits of rock salt. Archaeological evidence has
(18:06):
actually been found at Big Bone Lick of early human habitation.
Some sources provided a steady supply of salt year round,
while others were more subject to the whims of like
climate and environment. You can see this with like rising
sea levels or falling sea levels like it changes the
access to salt. Salt, and so having access to a
(18:29):
steady source became the primary motivator for salt extraction or
mining or refining technologies which date back thousands of years
to at least around three thousand BCE. Yeah, and this
is in ancient China mostly, And those cities or towns
(18:51):
or settlements that over centuries had the salt and the
technology to produce it, they were the ones that grew
that often grew wealthy and powerful as they controlled this
valuable commodity. Why did we want so much salt? Like,
did we need it?
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Why was it? Why was it such a valuable commodity? Why? Right?
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Right, Well, we didn't need it in a physiological sense,
right at least as far as I could tell, we
needed it because salt has an incredible superpower. It can
freeze time at the basic level. Salt balances fluids, It
shifts the amount of water from here to there. And
(19:33):
if you overload something like say a fish, with salt,
that will suck the moisture out of the cells and
prevent the growth of microbe since they can't survive in
that super salty environment, and so salt is one of
our earliest preservatives. Why is this a superpower? Okay, So pretend,
(19:53):
if you will, that you live five thousand years ago
and you make your living catching and selling fish. So
you go out, you cast your nets, you set your lines,
whatever it is however you're catching fish, and then you
boat back to shore to peddle your wares. This is
pre refrigeration, pre ice. Your window for selling that fish
(20:16):
is incredibly small, as is your potential customer base. So
if you happen to be selling out a day when
everyone's got loads of fish, and you're like, well, you know,
why would I buy yours over theirs? I can't eat
this much fish, you probably have to drop your prices
to be competitive. If you're able to sell at all,
and if you don't sell anything that day, that means
(20:38):
that your labor has been lost and you have to
go out the next day and try again. Your income,
your livelihood, it depends on the whims of the local market.
It's a tenuous life to live. But if you could
freeze time, at least for the fish by adding some
salt and slowing its decay, you become a whole lot
(20:59):
less to high to the day to day shifts in
the market. In fact, you're not tied to your local
market at all. You could bring your salted fish on
long journeys along trade routes, and your fish now has
more value overall since it's loaded with this tasty and
precious substance. Nor are you tied to the seasonality of
(21:21):
some foods. So during those times of scarcity, like over winter,
when catch is low and you've eaten through all the
food that you've stored for those long months, now you
have these frozen in time salted fish getting you and
your family through. It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
It's pretty incredible. I mean, okay, so I have can
I ask you a question? Of course? So, but this
is like thousands and thousands of years ago, three thousand CE.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
You said, three thousand BCE BC see the future, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
The future. What before people figured out salt? First of all,
how did they figure it out?
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Like?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
How did how did they figure that out? And also
before that was there any like was it just you
could smoke things? Is that is that all they had?
Or yeah, actually that's a good question.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
I don't know when smoking, like the relative timing of
smoking versus salting but also, I mean smoking takes fuel
right as well. Yeah, the extraction of salts also can
take a lot of fuel. Okay, but yeah, what was
your other question? So I don't know about salting versus smoking.
(22:41):
You can't discover salts. Yeah, I mean I don't know
except for the fact that salt tastes good, right, So
I would imagine it was sort of that, Yeah, that
aspect of it. Like there, do I have this quote here? Yeah,
there's a quote from ancient each from an old papyrus
that reads, there is no better food than salted vegetables.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
I'm inclined to agree to agree with that.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Yeah, how interesting, Aaron. It's so weird to think about,
Like someone figured out, Hey, if I like boil this water,
what's leftover is this stuff and it tastes really good. Oh,
by the way, also it makes my fish last longer,
by the way, Now I've revolutionized the world.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Yeah right, I know. And it was a trans truly
transformative idea, especially in regions where climatic shifts shortened the
growing or harvesting or hunting or fishing seasons. Right, So
I used fish as an example, and fish would become
like the hugest commodity after the fourteenth century, with like
(23:48):
salted herring and then later cod. But salt was fundamental
to the production of so many other foods, some of
which had been salted for centuries. Pickling like sauerkraut and
other veg cheese, the salted fish sauce than mancient Rome
called garum misopei soy sauce. Cheese, butter our dairy products
(24:08):
used to contain a lot more salt. So there was
a recipe from the fourteenth century for butter that called
for one pound of salt for every ten pounds of butter.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Whoa, that's salty butter.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
I know, I would have loved it.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
It would be so good spread on some toast and sour.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Out perfection, bacon, ham, olives. I mean, there are so
many things that salt has been added to that helps
prolong it shelf life.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Right.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Salami comes from the word for salted, as does salad.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Salad.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah, I think it's like, yeah salted, that's hilarious. So
it's like so many things, yeah, salt, food, food and salts.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Wow, it's easy to love salt.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
I think this shows how easy it is to love salt.
The number of things that it was added to, and
not just for taste, but also for practical purposes, for
longevity of the foods. And this utility and love of
salt created a tremendous commercial opportunity. Cities that were close
to sources of salt, or those that produced lots of
(25:31):
salted foods grew wealthy on the trade that they conducted,
and as a result, global trade overall grew enormously. Salt
was used for a whole lot more than just salt
curing or even just like adding some seasoning to your meal.
It was used to cure leather, clean chimneys, to solder pipes,
glaze pottery, and as a medicine for all sorts of ailments.
(25:55):
But it was really by reducing seasonal dependence on foods
that salt made its mark on human civilizations. I don't
call it a superpower. Lightly like salt was also held
in great importance by many cultures. I think because of
the power that it held, it represented purity, incorruptibility, immortality, loyalty, durability,
(26:21):
hospitality like you better make sure that you have a
salt cellar on the table when you have guests over
Some of these salt sellers too, like historically are just
so intricate and beautiful. The Romans actually held salt in
such importance that they salt had to be on the
table before any other dish was placed there.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Ah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
It's used in many different religions, offerings, and rituals. It
was linked to arousal and passion and creativity. It was
thought to be important for fertility. It was the essence
of life. So think of the phrase salt of the earth.
According to the that's what Jesus said to his disciples.
(27:02):
You are the salt of the earth, the best of
the human race.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Right, pretty big deal, salts of the earth.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
It was used to protect from harm. You know, Sprinkle
a newborn baby with salt is what you're supposed to do.
Sprinkle your herd of cows, carry a little bag of
salt around your neck to ward off evil. Or if
you've watched the show Supernatural, there's always a bag of salt.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Saltar demons, yep, protect against demons, make your witches circles.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
And so to spill salt was considered a bad omen.
I mean, you know, you're supposed to like throw a
little bit of salt.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Over your left shoulder.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
That would that was like, that's the least extreme response
to a little bit of spilled salt. There are some
places where it was like, no, then you do that,
and you have to crawl under the table and then
do that again, Like it's like this whole step mm hmm. Interesting,
And that, like spilling salt being bad luck, goes back century.
In da Vinci's Last Supper, there's a bit of spilt
(28:03):
salt in front of judas a scariot, indicating that like
this isn't that wild?
Speaker 2 (28:09):
I saw that salt. Salt.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Yeah, spilling salt could signify the end of a friendship,
or at least a quarrel. Oh, friendship was forged in salt.
Homer called it a divine substance. Plato said that it
was quote especially dear to the gods. Plutarch wrote that
(28:32):
without salt, practically nothing is eatable. Salt is added even
to bread and enriches its flavor. Beyond that, salty food
aids digestion, and it makes any food tender.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
And how interesting Aaron. I know, I'm thinking about all
of this in the context of what I'm going to
talk about next week, and it just makes it so interesting.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
It's quite the rebranding of salt what we've experienced, and
especially the last fifty years or so.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Right, yeah, right, right, right right.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
I mean a Pliny went so far as to say
that quote A civilized life is impossible without salt.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
And civilized life life is impossible impossible without salt.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Is it any wonder then, that those who held the
salt held the power. Salt itself was not necessarily rare, right,
it was never held as more important or equally valuable
as gold, for example. That's sort of like a I
don't know what you call an urban legend. That's like
a historical urban legend, myth maybe.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Yeah, that's and I don't know, I think might be right.
I have heard that, so I know what you mean
by that.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
It was just that it wasn't evenly distributed across a region,
and it required labor to extract and to move, and
so you had to like spend some It wasn't hard
to get. It was just it wasn't hard to get
in the sense that it was rare. It was hard
to get in the sense that it required labor. Yeah,
And so those who were positioned to transport or produce
salt benefited enormously from the taxes enforced on moving huge
(30:09):
amounts of the stuff or of salted foods. So in
ancient Rome, some of the first great roads were built
for salt transportation purposes. Via Solaria is one of these.
It means salt road salaria. Ancient Rome also had a
(30:30):
treasury position whose job it was to make decisions about
salt prices. Salt occasionally seems to have been used as currency,
although not as much as is often suggested. It's another myth.
And while the often repeated bit of trivia that Roman
soldiers were paid in salt is not true.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
They were not paid in salt. They were paid in money.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
The word salary does come from this period, meaning someone
paid an allowance to buy salt. So like if you
were paid a salary, it was like, here's your allowance
to buy salt.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Like that is sort of where that comes. We're not
paying you in salt, but we're paying you so you
can go buy your salt.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, get your own salt.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yeah, get your own salt.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
You know that phrase, not worth his salt, meaning someone
is not worth what you're paying them.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Oh, that's so interesting, Aaron, Yeah, yeah, I mean there
are salts.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
There are So this is what I'm saying, Like, you
are equipped now for trivia. You You're welcome more salt sayings,
or at least one more take it with a grain
of salt, you know, meaning with a healthy dose of skepticism.
That seems to have originated from a recipe for an
antidote by planning the elder who he listed a bunch
(31:47):
of things like Okay, so you're grinding together walnuts and
figs and rue add a grain of salt, and that
was thought to maybe like a digestion, and so over
time that kind of evolved into its current use.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
People think maybe it's to like.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
A digestion of difficult ideas interesting.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
I don't know if that's I feel like some of
the salt lore is kind of like whatever you want
it to be, right, and so that's what I want
it to be.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
But I like that because I feel like otherwise, when
you think about it, you're like, why does this phrase
not seem to fit with the rest of the salt
phrases right to the grain of the yeah aah yeah,
because it's like, oh, I'm not I don't really believe that,
so like take it with a grain of salt. So
it's like, if it's more to age your digestion, di
of this difficult idea, Yeah, let's go with it.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
We'll go with it. Rubbing salt in the wound, for instance.
That goes back to the days when salt was sometimes
used as a not very effective and extremely painful antiseptic.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
So it would be like, apply some salt to that wound. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Yeah. Back to the salt mines, meaning having to return
to grueling or unpleasant work. That phrase originated in the
seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds in Russia, when prisoners were
often sent to Siberia to work in the salt mines.
But I mean salt mines were intense places. So here's
a quote from fifteen fifty five about salt mines in Poland. Quote,
(33:19):
there are mountains in which the salt goes down very deep.
Here on the fifth of January fifteen twenty eight, I
climbed down fifty ladders in order to see for myself,
and there in the depths observed workers naked because of
the heat, using iron tools to dig out a most
valuable horde of salt from these inexhaustible mines as if
(33:41):
it had been gold and silver end quote. Yeah, down
there you're so high or naked, yeah, and you're having
to chip away salt like brutal. Yeah. So these were
deeply unpleasant places to work, I would imagine, and often,
you know, the ones who were working there were prisoners
or enslaved. People were forced to work there as punishment. Okay,
(34:05):
So generally speaking, there are two main sources of salt
for easy extraction, salt that's been dissolved in water like
seawater or salty springs, and then there's rock salt, which
exists kind of like from that quote and deposits underground.
You can get rock salt out of the earth by mining,
and you can get salt out of water by either
boiling off the water leaving salt crystals behind, which used
(34:29):
a tremendous amount of fuel. Forests had been devastated in
this process. Imagine like you can't you know, just to.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Get fuel to burn for to make salt.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Yeah, I mean. And also it wasn't like the getting
salt was the only reason for devastation of forests, but
like it helps be contributed yeah, yeah, or there's evaporation,
which has the same end result, it just takes a
whole lot longer and requires certain circumstances. Right, And that
is literally the most like surface level explanation of salt production.
(35:03):
And that's all I'm going to give you fair I have. Though,
Actually it's so funny, like some of the memories that emerge,
Like I was like, oh my gosh, I've been to
the salt festival, and I've been to a salt extraction site,
historical one in Peru at the salt mines of Maras,
and it's like, yeah, it goes back hundreds of years
at least, and it was really fascinating to see these
(35:24):
like tears of salt wells all fed by like a
salty underground spring. And then there's like they're harvested. I
had for a while, like a little baggy of salt
from Did you eat it? I did at some point,
and then I don't know what happened to it. I
lost it in the move, like one of my thousands
of moves. Yeah, and then there are also there are
(35:45):
lots of other steps and aspects to the extraction or
production of salt, you know, things like purification, the different
types of salt the origins. Some are more prize than others,
some are considered crude or adulterated, or.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Like just gross.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Salt production was so central to some towns and cities
that they took their name from the presence of salt mines.
Salzburg in Austria meaning roughly salt settlement, salt Coats in Scotland,
Saltville in Virginia, Hall and Germany. Many towns in England
ending with which like Middlewich, Northwich, Sandwich, salt like which
(36:26):
is often which is from what I could tell, which
is often tied to like the like artisan production like
there were like goods that were made there. But a
lot of witch's towns that end in which are were
like salt towns.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
They were salt towns. Interesting.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Salt production was extremely profitable, as was its transport. In
two thousand BCE, the Chinese government became the first to
basically create a salt monopoly and to use it to
become extremely prosperous, putting taxes on both domestically produced as
well as imported salt. And it would be like I mean,
it would be we can make salt for this amount,
(37:06):
We'll charge ten times that like that kind of thing,
and thousands of years later, Venice did the same thing,
first as a producer of salt and then by controlling
commerce and supplying it to much of southern Europe. The
Venetians themselves described salt as quote unquote the true foundation
of our state.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Okay, right, It was like salt.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Made Venice in many ways. And while salt could make
a region prosperous like Venice, in other cases such strict
control over the stuff could lead to unrest. France had
long had a salt tax since the thirteenth century, and man,
(37:49):
people hated this tax. First of all, it was really
unevenly applied and this like there could probably be a
textbook written about this salt tax. But it was really
unevenly applied, and so some regions were exempt while others weren't. Second,
it was kind of a flat tax, so that people
were forced to maybe buy a certain amount of salt
(38:09):
even if they didn't need all of it, and pay
taxes on it regardless of.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
How much they made.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
And so it was kind of this like unfair tax
because everyone had to pay a certain amount, Okay, if
that makes sense. Yeah, and salt was really expensive, so
like the when people had to buy that, you know,
the amount of that set amount of salt were required
to that would be about one eighth of a peasant's
(38:36):
yearly income. And it was like locally very expensive or
like within France, so it was that was ten times
more than a cost just across the border. And so
salt smuggling became a huge thing.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Sounds like healthcare in the US.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah, yep. And so yeah, people would
go across border and smuggle salt back because they're like,
I don't want to buy salt here, it's way too expensive.
And then there were like designated salt police who had
the right to enter houses to search for smuggled salt
based on their own suspicion.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Entire salt police.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
I mean, they probably did more.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Things, but I imagine that all they did was salt.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Same same.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Again, there is like so much more to the salt
to salt tax, but it like it's so intense that
the Catholic Church even sided with the French government, adding
a treatise in sixteen seventy four that stated, quote for
all Christians, smuggling of salt is a mortal sin id quote.
(39:45):
It's ridiculous. If you were caught, it could mean death.
Every year, thousands of people were arrested for salt smuggling
and either put in the galleys, forced to do labor,
or they were hanged.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
What isn't this ridiculous?
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Yeah, one paper I read estimated that the last year
before the French Revolution, thirty five hundred citizens were sentenced
to death or the galleys for salt smuggling and so salt.
Because of all of this ridiculousness around salt, it became
a symbol of the injustices of the government of the monarchy.
(40:26):
And so it has been suggested that salt was a
contributing factor to the uprising leading to the French Revolution.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Wow, not just the cake thing.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Not just the cake.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Don't let them eat salt, don't let make the cake
no salt? Yep, how interesting?
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Erin isn't that wild? And it's like probably aspects of
that have been exaggerated, but that is what Like, I
have citations for these myths, right, But that's not the
only revolution where salt has featured prominently. The oppressive British
tax and monopoly on salt in India led Gandhi to
March to the Sea in nineteen thirty in an act
(41:08):
of civil disobedience, and eventually this helped pave the way
for Indian independence, ending British colonial rule.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
So you know, I love it.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
I mean, given all of this, it is really strange
to think about this thing that we probably all take
for granted. Salt has something that created empires and cited revolution,
was integral in religious ceremonies, and held such important meaning
for thousands of years. Salt was a big deal. From
(41:38):
the time of its first widespread production five thousand years
ago to the Industrial Revolution, salt was, if not king,
at least one of the major players in shaping human history.
And over that time salt intake went from not very
much at all. This is worthy of a larger discussion,
but one book estimated that our paleolithic ants sesters consumed
(42:01):
less than one gram of salt per day. Today, what
is it like eight and a half grams on average
per day ten ten Okay, I saw eight and a
half somewhere. But yeah, dietary or like nutritional epidemiology is
a challenge. But we went from not very much to
(42:22):
orders of magnitude more and as we added more and
more salted foods to our diet. Our salt consumption skyrocketed
some regions that ate a lot of salted fish, like
people in Sweden in the sixteenth century, for example, our
estimated can't this does not seem right to me, But
I read it somewhere are estimated to have eaten around
(42:44):
one hundred grams per day, so that it seems.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
It seems impossible.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Like maybe maybe that's if you're looking at just the
straight salted fish. But if the salt was rinsed off,
or if the fish were soaked and so like, I
can't it being.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
That would be so salty.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
I know it hurts my mouth thinking about it, like
dry like salt about it. Yeah. But in the book Salt,
Kurlansky says that Europeans in the sixteenth through the eighteenth
centuries were taking in about forty to seventy grams per day.
But I've also seen lower estimates around like eighteen grams.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Okay, that's so interesting, Aaron, because I was going to
ask you if if there were any espect because I
couldn't find any estimates from like, you know, the last
few hundred years. Oh, this is all just such good
fodder for its fodder.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Uh but this is Yeah, so if even if it's
at the lower end of the estimate, like eighteen grams,
let's say it's twenty grams, that's still double what the
average American consumes today, which is actually, uh double.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Than what is recommended.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
And so we are doing a lot better nowadays, Like
even though we're told that we're not, we are doing
a lot better now than we were a few hundred
years go. Why did salt intake go down? It's not
because of health concerns.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Let me just get that out of the way. It
was because of refrigeration. Oh, that totally makes sense, right,
It blew my mind. Yeah, so everything was way way
so okay, there.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Was let me just yeah recap us.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
So back in the day, like when we humans evolved
into humans and started doing agriculture and all of that,
initially we were consuming a minimal amount of salt. We
weren't adding salt to our things. We were getting salt
just from the places, like animals and salt if it
(44:41):
was there, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
For most of human history, we consumed very little salt,
is what it seems.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah, then we figured out whoa, you can use salt
to make things last a lot longer. So we started
eating crep tons of it, tons of it, so an
unbelievable amount. Then we invented the refrigerator, and we're like, cool,
we don't need as much salt. There you think, there
(45:07):
you go, and now we are today, and now we are.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Here today, it's still eating salt because salt tastes good.
I mean, that's like, that's the other thing is that like,
and I know that you're going to get a little
bit into the sort of the evolution the salt cravings
and stuff like that, but there's a difference between tasting
good and like needing salt for cocked but it is.
It seems like it has been suggested that because that
(45:32):
we think of salt like taste, salt tastes good to us.
That's an adaptive trait because we would have needed more
salt historically, I think, or we would have been maybe
more on the.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Edge and the tenuousness of it because we are omnivores,
whereas like carnivores don't really have salt. We will talk
more about it next week, but yeah, it's a there
are reasons why salt tastes so good to yus.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Yeah, and there are reasons also, I mean, there are
reasons that salt tastes good and so therefore removing salt
from foods, even though it's better for our health, makes
people not want to eat those foods, which means that
the salt industry doesn't want us doesn't want to remove
the salt from foods. Anyway, we'll get to that next
week too. But also I'm just putting in a plug
(46:20):
now for a book Club episode that's coming out later
this season, all about the history of refrigeration.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
It is fascinating.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
It's called Frostbite by Nicolotwilly and so stay tuned for that.
But yeah, it wasn't just refrigeration. There was also canning.
So there were just alternatives to salt when it came
to long term storage or transport renovation. Yeah, at the
same time, the industrial revolution had made salt extraction much
simpler using updated technologies and fuel, and so you have
(46:48):
the simultaneous like drop and demand just as it had
become easier to produce. So that explains in part why
it's so cheap today. I mean, this was quite the
fall from grace for salt to go from this like
esteemed substance without which civilized life is not possible or whatever.
Pliny said to We don't need you anymore. You're not
(47:11):
welcome here.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
Maybe bad for.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
Me, Yeah, it's kind of hurt. That's like, that's quite
a transformation.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
Salt is just like, oh.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
And then the death blow is about to come. Things
were about to get a whole lot worse for NaCl.
The salt Wars were about to begin. Tell me, yeah,
I mean this is what you're gonna tell me about.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
Oh I thought it wasn't real war.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
No, no, no, no, I mean it's just like. I
also don't know if it's just for the early part
of the debate about salt or like, also if salt
wars can be applied to the discussions that have been
happening over the last few decades. But anyway, I'll tell you.
In the late eighteen hundreds, when salt consumption began to decline,
salt had a very different reputation than it does today.
(48:00):
Rather than being seen as a contributing factor to cardiovascular disease,
kidney disease, and other health issues, it was avoidance of
salt that was thought to.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Be bad for your health. Interesting what changed?
Speaker 1 (48:12):
It started with a trickle of papers suggesting that salt
maybe wasn't as healthful as previously thought. In eighteen ninety nine,
a couple of researchers put forth the idea that salt
pulled water from your tissues, increasing plasma volume and water retention.
And then a researcher named Atchard in nineteen oh one
(48:32):
suggested that salt consumption led to the edema of Bright's disease,
which is chronic inflammation of the kidneys, and possibly a
whole host of other conditions. And then in nineteen oh
four is kind of really when the salt, not really
the tides began to turn, but it was like this
was the sticking idea. Two French scientists Ambard and Boujard
(48:55):
published their hypothesis that high salt intake led to hypertension
nineteen oh four, and this kicked off what would become
known as the salt wars. Side note, though these two
scientists were not the first to suggest the salt blood
pressure hypothesis or sodium blood pressure. In fact, several thousand
(49:16):
years before, around twenty six hundred BCE, an ancient Chinese
medical text warns of the relationship between salt and hypertension.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Interesting quote, If.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
Too much salt is used in blood, the pulse hardens
end quote. Isn't that fascinating?
Speaker 2 (49:36):
It is really fascinating. It was like someone said it
way back when. But they're like, yeah, that's fine though, Yeah,
we're all dying from infectious disease well before hypertension becomes
a problem.
Speaker 1 (49:45):
I mean that's probably a big part of it too.
They're like, well, just never got it, never caught up
with you, right, Yeah, But thousands of years later, we're
still fighting about this. Right after the paper by Ambard
and other researchers attempted to replicate their findings. Essentially, what
these two had done was feed six patients with hypertension
(50:08):
varying amounts of salt and found that those who were
on lower sodium diets had a reduction in blood pressure.
But the replication part of this was tricky. There they
often didn't include controls. The first study by Ambard and
Bouchard did not. The results were not very clear cut
and was like for some maybe it did something, for
others it didn't, you know, And it didn't specifically implicate salt,
(50:31):
and only salt in the blood pressure changes that they observed.
Because it was like a whole dietary shift. So it
was like, was it less salt or was it also
that you're eating more rice? Or you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (50:41):
Like, yeah, yeah, such a good question.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
Some scientists did observe a reduction in blood pressure with
declining levels of sodium, while others saw no difference whatsoever,
and so it was like kind of all over the place.
By the mid twentieth century, the consensus was a weak one. Yeah, yes,
low salt diets did seem to improve blood pressure, but
only in a subset of people. Add on to this
(51:07):
the fact that low salt diets are not tasty when
you've been used to eating loads of salt, and people
were not keen on the idea of limiting salt as
a way to treat high blood pressure. But some researchers
kept on looking because if salt reduction can be helpful,
like how and why this could save lives? And so
the second half of the twentieth century saw a ton
(51:28):
of studies much more carefully designed, carried out on the
relationship between sodium intake and hypertension, and as with their
earlier research, the results were mixed and the message became complicated,
not easily communicated within a headline, because whoever actually reads like.
Speaker 2 (51:44):
The body of text in an article.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
The nuance surrounding any aspect of nutrition and health is huge,
and salt is no exception. There are industry groups like
the Salt Institute also through their hat and their consultants,
sometimes physicians or academic into the mix, which further muddied
the waters. And after years of back and forth and
well technically and commentaries on articles and replies to those commentaries,
(52:10):
it seems that we now have maybe a clearer picture
on the relationship between sodium and hypertension.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
Maybe not.
Speaker 1 (52:18):
I'll let you tell us next week.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Okay, I can't wait too. That was such a good setup, Aaron. Oh,
thank you, thank you, thank you, Salt salts. Yeah, I
am thrilled to keep going with this me too, because yeah,
that was just such a good way to set up,
especially this idea that like thousands of years ago, we
(52:47):
were consuming minimal salt many thousands of years ago. Yes,
then for potentially thousands of years we were consuming so
much salt. And now where are we at today? I
can't wait to say are we Oh?
Speaker 1 (53:03):
It's so exciting and there is like this was. There
is so much to the history of salt. You could
read whole books on recipes with salt. I mean there
really that the Kurlansky Salt Book just is mostly recipes
that I feel like is what it ended up being.
It's it's a really interesting I just love the history
(53:27):
of food too, I think, is what I'm realizing.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
Yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
But if you would like to learn more about salt,
I've got some sources for you. So I don't know
if I would give the Salt Book a resounding recommendation.
I actually found it like not very well organized and
so a little bit disappointing in that regard. But there
are lots of other papers about salt. There was one
(53:52):
by I think it was called bo Cirillo from nineteen
ninety four, a History of Salt block from nineteen seventy
six Salt in Human History there, and then if you
want to learn about the origins of the Salt Wars,
there's one by de nicol Antonio and O'Keefe from twenty
seventeen called the History of the Salt Wars, and just
a whole bunch more that I will post on the
(54:13):
website this podcast. Yeah, yeah, thank you to Bloodmobile for
providing the music for this episode and all of our episodes.
Speaker 2 (54:22):
Thank you to Leanna and Tom and Brent and Pete
and Jessica and everyone else I'd exactly right Network for
making all this possible.
Speaker 1 (54:32):
Yeah, and thanks to you listeners for listening.
Speaker 2 (54:35):
Tell us what you think about salts.
Speaker 1 (54:37):
Do you have any fun salt facts to share?
Speaker 2 (54:40):
And make sure that you're subscribed so you don't miss
next week's episode. Oh yeah, yeah, because that's where the
meat of it really is. No, so this was meat,
no salted meat, betam.
Speaker 1 (54:51):
This was the seasoning. Next week is the substance.
Speaker 2 (54:56):
And a special thank you also to our patrons. Thank
you so so much for your support. It really does
mean the world to us. Well, until next time, wash
your hands, you filthy animals.
The so called liquomen is made. In this manner, the
intestines of fish are thrown into a vessel and salted.
Small fish, either the best smelt or small mullet or
sprats or wolffish, or whatever is deemed to be small,
are all salted together and shaken frequently, and are fermented
in the sun. After it has been reduced in the heat,
(00:23):
garam is obtained from it. In this way, a large,
strong basket is placed into the vessel of the aforementioned fish,
and the garum streams into the basket. In this way,
the so called liquimen is strained through the basket. When
it is shaken up, the remaining refuse is alec Next,
if you wish to use the garum immediately, that is
(00:44):
to say, not fermented in the sun, but to boil it,
you do it this way when the brine has been
tested so that an egg having been thrown in floats
if it sinks it is not sufficiently salty, and throwing
the fish into the brine in a newly made earthen
way pot and adding in some oregano, you place it
on a sufficient fire until it is boiled, that is,
(01:06):
until it begins to reduce a little, some throw and
boiled down must unfermented wine. Next throwing the cooled liquid
into a filter. You toss it a second and a
third time through the filter until it turns out clear.
After having covered it, store it away.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
So did you like that? What is happening at home?
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Instructions to make this fishy salty, fishy sauce called garum
that's like was very popular in ancient Rome. That recipe
comes from I mean, the original recipes are probably hundreds
of years earlier, but that one comes from nine hundred
CE from a Greek agricultural manual.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
I have so many questions, like what what why?
Speaker 1 (02:53):
I mean, who doesn't love a little salty sauce on there?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
A little sauce. So it's the sauce, so you're not
going to eat the fish. It's like the sauce part
that you're keeping. I mean it's it's also like made
from fishy, fishy. You're salting the fish, but it's this,
it's the filter. It's the filterrait that you're keeping.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, but I imagine it it tastes fishy, fishy, yeah yeah, yeah,
it's like.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Fish sauce.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
I mean, I don't know what it tastes like.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
But I I mean, should we try it? I would
love to. I love fish sauce, so me too could
be good.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yeah, this is going to be a couple of weird episodes.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I'm really excited about it.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh and I'm Aaron aman Updyke and
this is this podcast will kill you.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
It's getting weird. But we're talking about Salt. Salt, Salt.
This all starts two episodes. Honestly, though, like I think
it ended up it started. We've been through a roller
coaster of feelings about Salt throughout the process. The making
of it started because I was like, I bought the
(04:04):
book Salt. I found it at a thrift store and
I was like, I've been wanting to read this book
for a while.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
And I was like, I basically strong armed you into
doing two episodes on Salt.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
It's accurate.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
And then I was like I don't want to do
this anymore, and you were like, no, I found a
good story, Let's do this. And I was like okay,
and then I was like, oh cool, Actually Salt is
really interesting.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah. Really, we went back and forth several times, had
some regrets, came through it.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah, I think we'll have no regrets at the end
of it.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
No, I'm already like really stoked for today. I am too.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
I am too. We do have some business to get
out of the way first.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yeah, should we like warn people what these two episodes
are going to be about. Oh, yeah, that's probably a
good idea.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah, the first episode, so today, what I'm going to
be talking about is kind of the historical aspects of salt,
like why when did we start using it as much
as we did? And some just like honestly, you're gonna
be well equipped to hit up the next Trivia night
if there are any questions about salt.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I love that. I'm really I hope there's a whole
salt based section in your next Trivia Day.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
That wouldn't that be If there is, please let us know.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
That would be so great.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
And then you next episode, Aaron, tell them what you're
going to be talking about.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
I'm going to talk about salt and our health. There
you go, broadly, very very broadly speaking.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I'm excited for this because I feel like there is
so much noise.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Yes, okay, but you're right, we have some business first.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Quarantiny times, Quarantiny time I love how it's turned from
like a fun thing that we do to business.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
It is business, the business portion of it.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
We're drinking grains of salt.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Grains of salt because there's a lot.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Of the history of salt that you should take with
a grain of salt, and there's definitely aspects of the
current salt debate today you should take some grains of
salt with yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Or maybe not a or not. And the grains of
salt is based on.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
A cocktail that you know has been established for a
while that has salt in the name.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
It's called the Salty Dog. The Salty Dog, which we
also done this before. Maybe it's fine, it's fine, we're
calling it something new.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah, I feel like after one hundred something episodes we
are allowed to repeat if we Yeah, if we try
our hardest not to.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Do whatever we want.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
It's grapefruit juice and either vodka or gin, whatever your pick,
and the assaulted rim. Yeah, it's pretty simple.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Pretty simple, pretty dilish. Yeah, we'll post the full recipe
on our website. This podcast will kill you. Nope, we
don't do that anymore.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
We're gonna try though Aaron List site.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
This podcast with Killara dot com and all of our
social media is where you will definitely see it there, yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Also on our website you can find all sorts of things,
from transcripts to links to our bookshop dot org affiliate page,
our Goodreads lists. You can find links to merch You
can find oh man who does a link to a
first hand account, form contact us form stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Everything? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Anything else? Or can we just get started?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Tell me about salt erin I can't wait too.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Okay, let's take a quick break and then I'll get
right to it. Aaron, I love salt.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
I know you did.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Like you've seen me eat French fries like I'm salting
and already very salty food. It's not good or is it?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Or I guess we'll find out more next week.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
No, I think it's I think it's not good. I
think it's bad. But despite knowing this, despite knowing that
it's probably not great, that I'm salting things and eating
a lot of salt, I want more of it. I
feel like I need salt. I crave salt, and it
might occasionally be the case that I do actually need
to replenish some salt, Like maybe I'm do a long
(08:36):
run in the heat, or I'm working outside all day
and I'm sweating out lots of salt. But in general,
nowadays we eat a whole lot more salt than we
need to like make up for, right, Like we're able
to make up the salt that we lose pretty easily. Yeah,
But what does enough salt mean? Like, what does it
(08:58):
mean in a biological sense? I mean, and I'm not
going to answer that question, but the answer does vary
from person to person, I think in general, and there
are guidelines that also help to determine what enough is.
These guidelines have, of course, undergone some shifts in the
past few decades. In his book Salt, a World History,
(09:20):
author Mark Kurlanski writes that the average human contains about
two hundred and fifty grams of salt, So that.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Statistic, right, which is enough to fill?
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Just to visualize this, a couple a few standard sized salt.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Shakers, yeah, yeah, like the little ones you have on
your dinner table salty.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Whenever we lose salt, which we're constantly doing through bodily
functions like sweating or peeing, we need to consume more
to replenish what we've lost. If we don't, in extreme cases,
we do run the risk of our bodies shutting down. Basically,
salt is essential for life, and when I say salt,
I am referring to the dietary salt that we think of,
(10:03):
mostly sodium chloride, the stuff that we consume, not salt
is in like the broad chemical term for when an
acid combines with a base.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I have like the same disclaimer episode too.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Like just I know someone's gonna be like, excuse me,
salt is actually quite a broad term. Yeah, I know,
but I'm talking about salt, like talking about sodium sodium. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
I also don't know how you would approach a history
of like salt in the broad chemical sense.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
I don't know. You learned about ions and.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
I guess sure, I mean, but to be honest, like,
I'm also still grappling with how you approach a history
of table salt like sodium chloride. Salt because it has
had and it continues to have, such a profound influence
throughout so much of our species, evolutionary and written history.
Salt has held symbolic and religious significance. It has shaped
(11:00):
human settlement, It has led to revolutions, It has been
used as a commodity, a currency, and as a medicine.
Salt has held the key to some nation's prosperity and
the downfall of others. It's some pretty powerful stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah, sounds like it, right.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
But now, when you can saunter into any grocery store
and pick up a jar of the stuff for pennies,
you might not be awestruck by the wonder of salt.
In fact, you might instead be shopping for low sodium alternatives.
How can I get less of this stuff?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
How can I avoid this? Right?
Speaker 1 (11:37):
But that would blow the minds of time travelers from
almost any other point in history prior to the twentieth century. Really,
what do you mean you don't want salt in your food?
What do you mean salt is so cheap? These days,
we don't think twice about whether or not we'll have
access to salt. If anything, our primary concern when it
comes to salt is how to eat less of it
(11:58):
for our health. That wasn't the case for most of
human history. One of the things that I love about
microhistories is how they always make the case for like
this thing, this subject, this invention, this incident, this one
point in history holds the key to everything. It explains everything.
(12:21):
But with salt, though, I'm like kind of convinced you
buy it. I'm buying it. I'm buying it. All animals
need salt. How much they need and where they get
it from depends on the species.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Or the individual.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
And next week, Arin, you'll do this the honor of
talking about how much we humans need, maybe, which, as
we'll see, is a very contentious issue, much more so
than I realized. But for now, I want to tell
you where humans got salt and what we did with it,
what we used to do with it. Salt occurs naturally
in all sorts of forms, right. It's in salt water
(12:59):
the ocean and seas, in salt springs, in salt deposits underground,
like rock salt in the crusts of dried salty lakes.
We can consume or harvest salt directly from these sources,
and we can also get salt from eating the things
that also take in salt, like, for instance, animals. Right, So,
(13:20):
early humans got a good proportion of their salt from
the wild game that they killed, including both like eating
consuming the meat of animals and their blood like drinking
the blood or using the blood to make other dishes exactly, yeah,
or we got salt from fish or other marine life
for those that were living closer to the coasts. But
(13:42):
as humans started to settle in larger groups and develop agriculture,
diet shifted to include proportionally more grains and vegetables, which
are generally speaking, much lower in salt than animal products. Fortunately,
domesticated livestock like sheep, pigs, and cattle fall close behind
the development of agriculture, making them a handy, close by
(14:05):
source of salt. One paper I read suggested that livestock
domestication was actually helped along because the wild ancestors of
these animals were drawn to human settlements by the salt
content of human urine. They would be attracted to human settlements.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Interesting, right, So then it made it easier to domesticate
them because they're like coming over anywhere anyway.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Maybe they're getting used to humans, you know, like yeah, yeah,
I mean I don't know, and I don't know how
you would like actually measure that in any capacity, but yeah,
but it's a fun idea, yeah, and so and also
I think it's like which animals would be drawn to that,
So I mentioned earlier. How some animals need more salt
(14:49):
than others, or they vary in how they get it.
The general rule that I saw mentioned was that carnivores
tend to get their salt from their prey because the
bodies of animals contain lot more salt than like grasses
and veggies and whatnot, and so herbivores will often supplement
with naturally occurring sources of salt, like salt licks. Here's
(15:11):
my big reveal. So I have the sweatshirt on.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Oh my god, stop, did you have like something covering it?
Speaker 1 (15:20):
It's a little post it that's ramen. It's like, yeah,
instant ramen post it.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
That's so good on so many levels. Oh wait where
their sweatshirts from?
Speaker 1 (15:33):
So my sweatshirt is a place that I have taken
you erin.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
It is called.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Big Bone Lick State Historic Site. We call it Big
Bone Lick State Park. Growing up Bone Baby Big Bone Lick.
So this is in northern Kentucky. Yes, that is the
actual name of it. Yes, I am wrapping a sweatshirt
that also has a wooly mammoth on it.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I wish you could see it better. Your mic isn't
exactly the wrong spot.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Can you see it now?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
There? It is chuck it out.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
It's red, it is red, and it's It's called Big
Bone Leake State Park because there are old salt licks
that prehistoric megafauna used to come to for salt. There
are so many lots of fossils of things like mammoth,
ground sloths, et cetera there, and it's known. I'm like,
it's so thrilling to talk about Big.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Bone State Park.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
It's known as the birthplace of American vertebrate paleontology because
of all of these fossils.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
That have been found there.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
And it's funny too, a lot of the fossils that
were found are actually reside in other countries because it
was like in the seventeen hundreds and so and so
they're all just being shipped out to other places eighteen hundreds.
But also it's I just have to mention it is
in fairly close proximity to the Creation Museum, which I
(16:51):
just find particularly a little you know, rich irony.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
A little on the nose.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Yeah, it is. But also at Big Bone Lick State
Park State Historic Site, there is an annual salt festival
that is held there. I've only been once but I
remember some of the salt making demonstrations. It's really cool.
It happens around mid October if I remember correctly, So
if you're in the area next year, you should definitely
(17:17):
check it out. Anyway, that's my little plug for State Park. Yes,
there's a put putt, the free put putt course. We
go there all the time. Anyway, back to salt licks
and animals and domestication, you can also see this happening now.
So for instance, if you here in Colorado, if you
drive up to Mount Blue Sky, often the goats will
(17:40):
come and to your cars and lick the salt off
of your cars.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Yeah, and it's not like these these mountain goats are
on their way to domestication, just that animals are drawn
to salt, as are humans. Many early human settlements were
situated close to sources of salt, you know, salty springs,
salty lakes, underground deposits of rock salt. Archaeological evidence has
(18:06):
actually been found at Big Bone Lick of early human habitation.
Some sources provided a steady supply of salt year round,
while others were more subject to the whims of like
climate and environment. You can see this with like rising
sea levels or falling sea levels like it changes the
access to salt. Salt, and so having access to a
(18:29):
steady source became the primary motivator for salt extraction or
mining or refining technologies which date back thousands of years
to at least around three thousand BCE. Yeah, and this
is in ancient China mostly, And those cities or towns
(18:51):
or settlements that over centuries had the salt and the
technology to produce it, they were the ones that grew
that often grew wealthy and powerful as they controlled this
valuable commodity. Why did we want so much salt? Like,
did we need it?
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Why was it? Why was it such a valuable commodity? Why? Right?
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Right, Well, we didn't need it in a physiological sense,
right at least as far as I could tell, we
needed it because salt has an incredible superpower. It can
freeze time at the basic level. Salt balances fluids, It
shifts the amount of water from here to there. And
(19:33):
if you overload something like say a fish, with salt,
that will suck the moisture out of the cells and
prevent the growth of microbe since they can't survive in
that super salty environment, and so salt is one of
our earliest preservatives. Why is this a superpower? Okay, So pretend,
(19:53):
if you will, that you live five thousand years ago
and you make your living catching and selling fish. So
you go out, you cast your nets, you set your lines,
whatever it is however you're catching fish, and then you
boat back to shore to peddle your wares. This is
pre refrigeration, pre ice. Your window for selling that fish
(20:16):
is incredibly small, as is your potential customer base. So
if you happen to be selling out a day when
everyone's got loads of fish, and you're like, well, you know,
why would I buy yours over theirs? I can't eat
this much fish, you probably have to drop your prices
to be competitive. If you're able to sell at all,
and if you don't sell anything that day, that means
(20:38):
that your labor has been lost and you have to
go out the next day and try again. Your income,
your livelihood, it depends on the whims of the local market.
It's a tenuous life to live. But if you could
freeze time, at least for the fish by adding some
salt and slowing its decay, you become a whole lot
(20:59):
less to high to the day to day shifts in
the market. In fact, you're not tied to your local
market at all. You could bring your salted fish on
long journeys along trade routes, and your fish now has
more value overall since it's loaded with this tasty and
precious substance. Nor are you tied to the seasonality of
(21:21):
some foods. So during those times of scarcity, like over winter,
when catch is low and you've eaten through all the
food that you've stored for those long months, now you
have these frozen in time salted fish getting you and
your family through. It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
It's pretty incredible. I mean, okay, so I have can
I ask you a question? Of course? So, but this
is like thousands and thousands of years ago, three thousand CE.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
You said, three thousand BCE BC see the future, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
The future. What before people figured out salt? First of all,
how did they figure it out?
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Like?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
How did how did they figure that out? And also
before that was there any like was it just you
could smoke things? Is that is that all they had?
Or yeah, actually that's a good question.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
I don't know when smoking, like the relative timing of
smoking versus salting but also, I mean smoking takes fuel
right as well. Yeah, the extraction of salts also can
take a lot of fuel. Okay, but yeah, what was
your other question? So I don't know about salting versus smoking.
(22:41):
You can't discover salts. Yeah, I mean I don't know
except for the fact that salt tastes good, right, So
I would imagine it was sort of that, Yeah, that
aspect of it. Like there, do I have this quote here? Yeah,
there's a quote from ancient each from an old papyrus
that reads, there is no better food than salted vegetables.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
I'm inclined to agree to agree with that.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Yeah, how interesting, Aaron. It's so weird to think about,
Like someone figured out, Hey, if I like boil this water,
what's leftover is this stuff and it tastes really good. Oh,
by the way, also it makes my fish last longer,
by the way, Now I've revolutionized the world.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Yeah right, I know. And it was a trans truly
transformative idea, especially in regions where climatic shifts shortened the
growing or harvesting or hunting or fishing seasons. Right, So
I used fish as an example, and fish would become
like the hugest commodity after the fourteenth century, with like
(23:48):
salted herring and then later cod. But salt was fundamental
to the production of so many other foods, some of
which had been salted for centuries. Pickling like sauerkraut and
other veg cheese, the salted fish sauce than mancient Rome
called garum misopei soy sauce. Cheese, butter our dairy products
(24:08):
used to contain a lot more salt. So there was
a recipe from the fourteenth century for butter that called
for one pound of salt for every ten pounds of butter.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Whoa, that's salty butter.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
I know, I would have loved it.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
It would be so good spread on some toast and sour.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Out perfection, bacon, ham, olives. I mean, there are so
many things that salt has been added to that helps
prolong it shelf life.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Right.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Salami comes from the word for salted, as does salad.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Salad.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah, I think it's like, yeah salted, that's hilarious. So
it's like so many things, yeah, salt, food, food and salts.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Wow, it's easy to love salt.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
I think this shows how easy it is to love salt.
The number of things that it was added to, and
not just for taste, but also for practical purposes, for
longevity of the foods. And this utility and love of
salt created a tremendous commercial opportunity. Cities that were close
to sources of salt, or those that produced lots of
(25:31):
salted foods grew wealthy on the trade that they conducted,
and as a result, global trade overall grew enormously. Salt
was used for a whole lot more than just salt
curing or even just like adding some seasoning to your meal.
It was used to cure leather, clean chimneys, to solder pipes,
glaze pottery, and as a medicine for all sorts of ailments.
(25:55):
But it was really by reducing seasonal dependence on foods
that salt made its mark on human civilizations. I don't
call it a superpower. Lightly like salt was also held
in great importance by many cultures. I think because of
the power that it held, it represented purity, incorruptibility, immortality, loyalty, durability,
(26:21):
hospitality like you better make sure that you have a
salt cellar on the table when you have guests over
Some of these salt sellers too, like historically are just
so intricate and beautiful. The Romans actually held salt in
such importance that they salt had to be on the
table before any other dish was placed there.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Ah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
It's used in many different religions, offerings, and rituals. It
was linked to arousal and passion and creativity. It was
thought to be important for fertility. It was the essence
of life. So think of the phrase salt of the earth.
According to the that's what Jesus said to his disciples.
(27:02):
You are the salt of the earth, the best of
the human race.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Right, pretty big deal, salts of the earth.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
It was used to protect from harm. You know, Sprinkle
a newborn baby with salt is what you're supposed to do.
Sprinkle your herd of cows, carry a little bag of
salt around your neck to ward off evil. Or if
you've watched the show Supernatural, there's always a bag of salt.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Saltar demons, yep, protect against demons, make your witches circles.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
And so to spill salt was considered a bad omen.
I mean, you know, you're supposed to like throw a
little bit of salt.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Over your left shoulder.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
That would that was like, that's the least extreme response
to a little bit of spilled salt. There are some
places where it was like, no, then you do that,
and you have to crawl under the table and then
do that again, Like it's like this whole step mm hmm. Interesting,
And that, like spilling salt being bad luck, goes back century.
In da Vinci's Last Supper, there's a bit of spilt
(28:03):
salt in front of judas a scariot, indicating that like
this isn't that wild?
Speaker 2 (28:09):
I saw that salt. Salt.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Yeah, spilling salt could signify the end of a friendship,
or at least a quarrel. Oh, friendship was forged in salt.
Homer called it a divine substance. Plato said that it
was quote especially dear to the gods. Plutarch wrote that
(28:32):
without salt, practically nothing is eatable. Salt is added even
to bread and enriches its flavor. Beyond that, salty food
aids digestion, and it makes any food tender.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
And how interesting Aaron. I know, I'm thinking about all
of this in the context of what I'm going to
talk about next week, and it just makes it so interesting.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
It's quite the rebranding of salt what we've experienced, and
especially the last fifty years or so.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Right, yeah, right, right, right right.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
I mean a Pliny went so far as to say
that quote A civilized life is impossible without salt.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
And civilized life life is impossible impossible without salt.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Is it any wonder then, that those who held the
salt held the power. Salt itself was not necessarily rare, right,
it was never held as more important or equally valuable
as gold, for example. That's sort of like a I
don't know what you call an urban legend. That's like
a historical urban legend, myth maybe.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Yeah, that's and I don't know, I think might be right.
I have heard that, so I know what you mean
by that.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
It was just that it wasn't evenly distributed across a region,
and it required labor to extract and to move, and
so you had to like spend some It wasn't hard
to get. It was just it wasn't hard to get
in the sense that it was rare. It was hard
to get in the sense that it required labor. Yeah,
And so those who were positioned to transport or produce
salt benefited enormously from the taxes enforced on moving huge
(30:09):
amounts of the stuff or of salted foods. So in
ancient Rome, some of the first great roads were built
for salt transportation purposes. Via Solaria is one of these.
It means salt road salaria. Ancient Rome also had a
(30:30):
treasury position whose job it was to make decisions about
salt prices. Salt occasionally seems to have been used as currency,
although not as much as is often suggested. It's another myth.
And while the often repeated bit of trivia that Roman
soldiers were paid in salt is not true.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
They were not paid in salt. They were paid in money.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
The word salary does come from this period, meaning someone
paid an allowance to buy salt. So like if you
were paid a salary, it was like, here's your allowance
to buy salt.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Like that is sort of where that comes. We're not
paying you in salt, but we're paying you so you
can go buy your salt.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, get your own salt.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yeah, get your own salt.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
You know that phrase, not worth his salt, meaning someone
is not worth what you're paying them.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Oh, that's so interesting, Aaron, Yeah, yeah, I mean there
are salts.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
There are So this is what I'm saying, Like, you
are equipped now for trivia. You You're welcome more salt sayings,
or at least one more take it with a grain
of salt, you know, meaning with a healthy dose of skepticism.
That seems to have originated from a recipe for an
antidote by planning the elder who he listed a bunch
(31:47):
of things like Okay, so you're grinding together walnuts and
figs and rue add a grain of salt, and that
was thought to maybe like a digestion, and so over
time that kind of evolved into its current use.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
People think maybe it's to like.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
A digestion of difficult ideas interesting.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
I don't know if that's I feel like some of
the salt lore is kind of like whatever you want
it to be, right, and so that's what I want
it to be.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
But I like that because I feel like otherwise, when
you think about it, you're like, why does this phrase
not seem to fit with the rest of the salt
phrases right to the grain of the yeah aah yeah,
because it's like, oh, I'm not I don't really believe that,
so like take it with a grain of salt. So
it's like, if it's more to age your digestion, di
of this difficult idea, Yeah, let's go with it.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
We'll go with it. Rubbing salt in the wound, for instance.
That goes back to the days when salt was sometimes
used as a not very effective and extremely painful antiseptic.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
So it would be like, apply some salt to that wound. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Yeah. Back to the salt mines, meaning having to return
to grueling or unpleasant work. That phrase originated in the
seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds in Russia, when prisoners were
often sent to Siberia to work in the salt mines.
But I mean salt mines were intense places. So here's
a quote from fifteen fifty five about salt mines in Poland. Quote,
(33:19):
there are mountains in which the salt goes down very deep.
Here on the fifth of January fifteen twenty eight, I
climbed down fifty ladders in order to see for myself,
and there in the depths observed workers naked because of
the heat, using iron tools to dig out a most
valuable horde of salt from these inexhaustible mines as if
(33:41):
it had been gold and silver end quote. Yeah, down
there you're so high or naked, yeah, and you're having
to chip away salt like brutal. Yeah. So these were
deeply unpleasant places to work, I would imagine, and often,
you know, the ones who were working there were prisoners
or enslaved. People were forced to work there as punishment. Okay,
(34:05):
So generally speaking, there are two main sources of salt
for easy extraction, salt that's been dissolved in water like
seawater or salty springs, and then there's rock salt, which
exists kind of like from that quote and deposits underground.
You can get rock salt out of the earth by mining,
and you can get salt out of water by either
boiling off the water leaving salt crystals behind, which used
(34:29):
a tremendous amount of fuel. Forests had been devastated in
this process. Imagine like you can't you know, just to.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Get fuel to burn for to make salt.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Yeah, I mean. And also it wasn't like the getting
salt was the only reason for devastation of forests, but
like it helps be contributed yeah, yeah, or there's evaporation,
which has the same end result, it just takes a
whole lot longer and requires certain circumstances. Right, And that
is literally the most like surface level explanation of salt production.
(35:03):
And that's all I'm going to give you fair I have. Though,
Actually it's so funny, like some of the memories that emerge,
Like I was like, oh my gosh, I've been to
the salt festival, and I've been to a salt extraction site,
historical one in Peru at the salt mines of Maras,
and it's like, yeah, it goes back hundreds of years
at least, and it was really fascinating to see these
(35:24):
like tears of salt wells all fed by like a
salty underground spring. And then there's like they're harvested. I
had for a while, like a little baggy of salt
from Did you eat it? I did at some point,
and then I don't know what happened to it. I
lost it in the move, like one of my thousands
of moves. Yeah, and then there are also there are
(35:45):
lots of other steps and aspects to the extraction or
production of salt, you know, things like purification, the different
types of salt the origins. Some are more prize than others,
some are considered crude or adulterated, or.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Like just gross.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Salt production was so central to some towns and cities
that they took their name from the presence of salt mines.
Salzburg in Austria meaning roughly salt settlement, salt Coats in Scotland,
Saltville in Virginia, Hall and Germany. Many towns in England
ending with which like Middlewich, Northwich, Sandwich, salt like which
(36:26):
is often which is from what I could tell, which
is often tied to like the like artisan production like
there were like goods that were made there. But a
lot of witch's towns that end in which are were
like salt towns.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
They were salt towns. Interesting.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Salt production was extremely profitable, as was its transport. In
two thousand BCE, the Chinese government became the first to
basically create a salt monopoly and to use it to
become extremely prosperous, putting taxes on both domestically produced as
well as imported salt. And it would be like I mean,
it would be we can make salt for this amount,
(37:06):
We'll charge ten times that like that kind of thing,
and thousands of years later, Venice did the same thing,
first as a producer of salt and then by controlling
commerce and supplying it to much of southern Europe. The
Venetians themselves described salt as quote unquote the true foundation
of our state.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Okay, right, It was like salt.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Made Venice in many ways. And while salt could make
a region prosperous like Venice, in other cases such strict
control over the stuff could lead to unrest. France had
long had a salt tax since the thirteenth century, and man,
(37:49):
people hated this tax. First of all, it was really
unevenly applied and this like there could probably be a
textbook written about this salt tax. But it was really
unevenly applied, and so some regions were exempt while others weren't. Second,
it was kind of a flat tax, so that people
were forced to maybe buy a certain amount of salt
(38:09):
even if they didn't need all of it, and pay
taxes on it regardless of.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
How much they made.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
And so it was kind of this like unfair tax
because everyone had to pay a certain amount, Okay, if
that makes sense. Yeah, and salt was really expensive, so
like the when people had to buy that, you know,
the amount of that set amount of salt were required
to that would be about one eighth of a peasant's
(38:36):
yearly income. And it was like locally very expensive or
like within France, so it was that was ten times
more than a cost just across the border. And so
salt smuggling became a huge thing.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Sounds like healthcare in the US.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah, yep. And so yeah, people would
go across border and smuggle salt back because they're like,
I don't want to buy salt here, it's way too expensive.
And then there were like designated salt police who had
the right to enter houses to search for smuggled salt
based on their own suspicion.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Entire salt police.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
I mean, they probably did more.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Things, but I imagine that all they did was salt.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Same same.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Again, there is like so much more to the salt
to salt tax, but it like it's so intense that
the Catholic Church even sided with the French government, adding
a treatise in sixteen seventy four that stated, quote for
all Christians, smuggling of salt is a mortal sin id quote.
(39:45):
It's ridiculous. If you were caught, it could mean death.
Every year, thousands of people were arrested for salt smuggling
and either put in the galleys, forced to do labor,
or they were hanged.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
What isn't this ridiculous?
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Yeah, one paper I read estimated that the last year
before the French Revolution, thirty five hundred citizens were sentenced
to death or the galleys for salt smuggling and so salt.
Because of all of this ridiculousness around salt, it became
a symbol of the injustices of the government of the monarchy.
(40:26):
And so it has been suggested that salt was a
contributing factor to the uprising leading to the French Revolution.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Wow, not just the cake thing.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Not just the cake.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Don't let them eat salt, don't let make the cake
no salt? Yep, how interesting?
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Erin isn't that wild? And it's like probably aspects of
that have been exaggerated, but that is what Like, I
have citations for these myths, right, But that's not the
only revolution where salt has featured prominently. The oppressive British
tax and monopoly on salt in India led Gandhi to
March to the Sea in nineteen thirty in an act
(41:08):
of civil disobedience, and eventually this helped pave the way
for Indian independence, ending British colonial rule.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
So you know, I love it.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
I mean, given all of this, it is really strange
to think about this thing that we probably all take
for granted. Salt has something that created empires and cited revolution,
was integral in religious ceremonies, and held such important meaning
for thousands of years. Salt was a big deal. From
(41:38):
the time of its first widespread production five thousand years
ago to the Industrial Revolution, salt was, if not king,
at least one of the major players in shaping human history.
And over that time salt intake went from not very
much at all. This is worthy of a larger discussion,
but one book estimated that our paleolithic ants sesters consumed
(42:01):
less than one gram of salt per day. Today, what
is it like eight and a half grams on average
per day ten ten Okay, I saw eight and a
half somewhere. But yeah, dietary or like nutritional epidemiology is
a challenge. But we went from not very much to
(42:22):
orders of magnitude more and as we added more and
more salted foods to our diet. Our salt consumption skyrocketed
some regions that ate a lot of salted fish, like
people in Sweden in the sixteenth century, for example, our
estimated can't this does not seem right to me, But
I read it somewhere are estimated to have eaten around
(42:44):
one hundred grams per day, so that it seems.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
It seems impossible.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Like maybe maybe that's if you're looking at just the
straight salted fish. But if the salt was rinsed off,
or if the fish were soaked and so like, I
can't it being.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
That would be so salty.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
I know it hurts my mouth thinking about it, like
dry like salt about it. Yeah. But in the book Salt,
Kurlansky says that Europeans in the sixteenth through the eighteenth
centuries were taking in about forty to seventy grams per day.
But I've also seen lower estimates around like eighteen grams.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Okay, that's so interesting, Aaron, because I was going to
ask you if if there were any espect because I
couldn't find any estimates from like, you know, the last
few hundred years. Oh, this is all just such good
fodder for its fodder.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Uh but this is Yeah, so if even if it's
at the lower end of the estimate, like eighteen grams,
let's say it's twenty grams, that's still double what the
average American consumes today, which is actually, uh double.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Than what is recommended.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
And so we are doing a lot better nowadays, Like
even though we're told that we're not, we are doing
a lot better now than we were a few hundred
years go. Why did salt intake go down? It's not
because of health concerns.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Let me just get that out of the way. It
was because of refrigeration. Oh, that totally makes sense, right,
It blew my mind. Yeah, so everything was way way
so okay, there.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Was let me just yeah recap us.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
So back in the day, like when we humans evolved
into humans and started doing agriculture and all of that,
initially we were consuming a minimal amount of salt. We
weren't adding salt to our things. We were getting salt
just from the places, like animals and salt if it
(44:41):
was there, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
For most of human history, we consumed very little salt,
is what it seems.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah, then we figured out whoa, you can use salt
to make things last a lot longer. So we started
eating crep tons of it, tons of it, so an
unbelievable amount. Then we invented the refrigerator, and we're like, cool,
we don't need as much salt. There you think, there
(45:07):
you go, and now we are today, and now we are.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Here today, it's still eating salt because salt tastes good.
I mean, that's like, that's the other thing is that like,
and I know that you're going to get a little
bit into the sort of the evolution the salt cravings
and stuff like that, but there's a difference between tasting
good and like needing salt for cocked but it is.
It seems like it has been suggested that because that
(45:32):
we think of salt like taste, salt tastes good to us.
That's an adaptive trait because we would have needed more
salt historically, I think, or we would have been maybe
more on the.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Edge and the tenuousness of it because we are omnivores,
whereas like carnivores don't really have salt. We will talk
more about it next week, but yeah, it's a there
are reasons why salt tastes so good to yus.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Yeah, and there are reasons also, I mean, there are
reasons that salt tastes good and so therefore removing salt
from foods, even though it's better for our health, makes
people not want to eat those foods, which means that
the salt industry doesn't want us doesn't want to remove
the salt from foods. Anyway, we'll get to that next
week too. But also I'm just putting in a plug
(46:20):
now for a book Club episode that's coming out later
this season, all about the history of refrigeration.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
It is fascinating.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
It's called Frostbite by Nicolotwilly and so stay tuned for that.
But yeah, it wasn't just refrigeration. There was also canning.
So there were just alternatives to salt when it came
to long term storage or transport renovation. Yeah, at the
same time, the industrial revolution had made salt extraction much
simpler using updated technologies and fuel, and so you have
(46:48):
the simultaneous like drop and demand just as it had
become easier to produce. So that explains in part why
it's so cheap today. I mean, this was quite the
fall from grace for salt to go from this like
esteemed substance without which civilized life is not possible or whatever.
Pliny said to We don't need you anymore. You're not
(47:11):
welcome here.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
Maybe bad for.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
Me, Yeah, it's kind of hurt. That's like, that's quite
a transformation.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
Salt is just like, oh.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
And then the death blow is about to come. Things
were about to get a whole lot worse for NaCl.
The salt Wars were about to begin. Tell me, yeah,
I mean this is what you're gonna tell me about.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
Oh I thought it wasn't real war.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
No, no, no, no, I mean it's just like. I
also don't know if it's just for the early part
of the debate about salt or like, also if salt
wars can be applied to the discussions that have been
happening over the last few decades. But anyway, I'll tell you.
In the late eighteen hundreds, when salt consumption began to decline,
salt had a very different reputation than it does today.
(48:00):
Rather than being seen as a contributing factor to cardiovascular disease,
kidney disease, and other health issues, it was avoidance of
salt that was thought to.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Be bad for your health. Interesting what changed?
Speaker 1 (48:12):
It started with a trickle of papers suggesting that salt
maybe wasn't as healthful as previously thought. In eighteen ninety nine,
a couple of researchers put forth the idea that salt
pulled water from your tissues, increasing plasma volume and water retention.
And then a researcher named Atchard in nineteen oh one
(48:32):
suggested that salt consumption led to the edema of Bright's disease,
which is chronic inflammation of the kidneys, and possibly a
whole host of other conditions. And then in nineteen oh
four is kind of really when the salt, not really
the tides began to turn, but it was like this
was the sticking idea. Two French scientists Ambard and Boujard
(48:55):
published their hypothesis that high salt intake led to hypertension
nineteen oh four, and this kicked off what would become
known as the salt wars. Side note, though these two
scientists were not the first to suggest the salt blood
pressure hypothesis or sodium blood pressure. In fact, several thousand
(49:16):
years before, around twenty six hundred BCE, an ancient Chinese
medical text warns of the relationship between salt and hypertension.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Interesting quote, If.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
Too much salt is used in blood, the pulse hardens
end quote. Isn't that fascinating?
Speaker 2 (49:36):
It is really fascinating. It was like someone said it
way back when. But they're like, yeah, that's fine though, Yeah,
we're all dying from infectious disease well before hypertension becomes
a problem.
Speaker 1 (49:45):
I mean that's probably a big part of it too.
They're like, well, just never got it, never caught up
with you, right, Yeah, But thousands of years later, we're
still fighting about this. Right after the paper by Ambard
and other researchers attempted to replicate their findings. Essentially, what
these two had done was feed six patients with hypertension
(50:08):
varying amounts of salt and found that those who were
on lower sodium diets had a reduction in blood pressure.
But the replication part of this was tricky. There they
often didn't include controls. The first study by Ambard and
Bouchard did not. The results were not very clear cut
and was like for some maybe it did something, for
others it didn't, you know, And it didn't specifically implicate salt,
(50:31):
and only salt in the blood pressure changes that they observed.
Because it was like a whole dietary shift. So it
was like, was it less salt or was it also
that you're eating more rice? Or you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (50:41):
Like, yeah, yeah, such a good question.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
Some scientists did observe a reduction in blood pressure with
declining levels of sodium, while others saw no difference whatsoever,
and so it was like kind of all over the place.
By the mid twentieth century, the consensus was a weak one. Yeah, yes,
low salt diets did seem to improve blood pressure, but
only in a subset of people. Add on to this
(51:07):
the fact that low salt diets are not tasty when
you've been used to eating loads of salt, and people
were not keen on the idea of limiting salt as
a way to treat high blood pressure. But some researchers
kept on looking because if salt reduction can be helpful,
like how and why this could save lives? And so
the second half of the twentieth century saw a ton
(51:28):
of studies much more carefully designed, carried out on the
relationship between sodium intake and hypertension, and as with their
earlier research, the results were mixed and the message became complicated,
not easily communicated within a headline, because whoever actually reads like.
Speaker 2 (51:44):
The body of text in an article.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
The nuance surrounding any aspect of nutrition and health is huge,
and salt is no exception. There are industry groups like
the Salt Institute also through their hat and their consultants,
sometimes physicians or academic into the mix, which further muddied
the waters. And after years of back and forth and
well technically and commentaries on articles and replies to those commentaries,
(52:10):
it seems that we now have maybe a clearer picture
on the relationship between sodium and hypertension.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
Maybe not.
Speaker 1 (52:18):
I'll let you tell us next week.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Okay, I can't wait too. That was such a good setup, Aaron. Oh,
thank you, thank you, thank you, Salt salts. Yeah, I
am thrilled to keep going with this me too, because yeah,
that was just such a good way to set up,
especially this idea that like thousands of years ago, we
(52:47):
were consuming minimal salt many thousands of years ago. Yes,
then for potentially thousands of years we were consuming so
much salt. And now where are we at today? I
can't wait to say are we Oh?
Speaker 1 (53:03):
It's so exciting and there is like this was. There
is so much to the history of salt. You could
read whole books on recipes with salt. I mean there
really that the Kurlansky Salt Book just is mostly recipes
that I feel like is what it ended up being.
It's it's a really interesting I just love the history
(53:27):
of food too, I think, is what I'm realizing.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
Yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
But if you would like to learn more about salt,
I've got some sources for you. So I don't know
if I would give the Salt Book a resounding recommendation.
I actually found it like not very well organized and
so a little bit disappointing in that regard. But there
are lots of other papers about salt. There was one
(53:52):
by I think it was called bo Cirillo from nineteen
ninety four, a History of Salt block from nineteen seventy
six Salt in Human History there, and then if you
want to learn about the origins of the Salt Wars,
there's one by de nicol Antonio and O'Keefe from twenty
seventeen called the History of the Salt Wars, and just
a whole bunch more that I will post on the
(54:13):
website this podcast. Yeah, yeah, thank you to Bloodmobile for
providing the music for this episode and all of our episodes.
Speaker 2 (54:22):
Thank you to Leanna and Tom and Brent and Pete
and Jessica and everyone else I'd exactly right Network for
making all this possible.
Speaker 1 (54:32):
Yeah, and thanks to you listeners for listening.
Speaker 2 (54:35):
Tell us what you think about salts.
Speaker 1 (54:37):
Do you have any fun salt facts to share?
Speaker 2 (54:40):
And make sure that you're subscribed so you don't miss
next week's episode. Oh yeah, yeah, because that's where the
meat of it really is. No, so this was meat,
no salted meat, betam.
Speaker 1 (54:51):
This was the seasoning. Next week is the substance.
Speaker 2 (54:56):
And a special thank you also to our patrons. Thank
you so so much for your support. It really does
mean the world to us. Well, until next time, wash
your hands, you filthy animals.
Hosts And Creators
Erin Welsh
Erin Allmann Updyke
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