Primarily used as an invaluable food preservative, in centuries past, people typically consumed over 10 times the amount of salt we do today.
Rulers at least as far back as the Chinese emperor, Yu, in 2200 B.C., kept tight reins on their country’s salt supply. These rulers saw salt as a great way to make money, so they taxed it heavily.
Over time, salt became an important part of society, interwoven into countless civilizations as an essential food preservative and even a method of trade and currency.
Unfortunately, over the last several decades, salt has been vilified in much the same way as fat. However, just as there are healthy fats necessary for optimal health and unhealthy fats that trigger health issues, there are healthy and unhealthy types of salt.
Salt is not only an important ingredient to help season foods, but it’s also essential for life – you cannot live without it.
Some studies even show that often popular low-salt diets may not be as optimal for your health as advertised, and in some cases, may be detrimental.
Ever wonder why one of the most common IVs doctors prescribe in hospitals is a saline solution? Saline solution is basically salt water that helps to regulate your body fluids. Doctors use IV saline to replenish lost fluids, flush wounds, deliver medications as well as sustain patients through surgery and other procedures.
Regardless of how much salt you consume, your body strives to maintain an optimal level of sodium. As your consumption declines, your body begins to extract sodium, as well as magnesium and calcium from your bones which can have a negative impact on your health.
A balance of salt and other minerals, potassium in particular, is important for optimal health. Whole foods that help balance your potassium-to-sodium ratio include leafy greens, Brussel sprouts, mushrooms and grapefruit.
However, when seasoning your favorite foods, the challenge arises when it comes to finding the purest salt available with natural amounts of potassium. There are important differences between standard, refined table salt and natural, health-promoting salt.
Refined vs Unrefined Salt – The Striking Differences
If you were to track the amount of salt people have consumed over the ages, you would notice an interesting pattern. Take Sweden, for example – it’s estimated that the average person in Sweden consumed about 100 grams of salt per day in the 1600s. Today, most Swedish people eat approximately 10 grams or less, with the average American consuming about 3.4 grams.
When salt is so essential to life, why would many healthcare professionals and associations guide people to cut back on daily salt intake?
Could it have anything to do with the type of salt you have available?
Seasoning and cooking salts are not all created equal. There are two primary types – refined and unrefined.
Typical grocery store table salt is a refined "chemically cleaned" unnatural form of salt. Refined salt is in almost every preserved product and processed food you eat. Therefore, if you add more of this salt to your already salted food, your body receives more salt than it can dispose of.
Refined salt lacks important minerals, like potassium, that our bodies need along with adequate salt intake to function optimally.
Typical refined table salt crystals are totally isolated from each other. In order for your body to metabolize these crystals, it must sacrifice tremendous amounts of energy.
Inorganic sodium chloride from refined salt can keep you from an ideal fluid balance and can overburden your body’s elimination systems, including your liver, kidneys, intestines, respiratory tract, skin and lymph system.
Typical unrefined salt has major advantages over refined. To start with, unrefined salt contains naturally occurring trace minerals, including potassium, that help support the all-important sodium-to-potassium ratio.
Potassium can help mitigate some of sodium’s more potentially problematic effects by encouraging your kidneys to excrete excess amounts. Your body was meant to function optimally with adequate mineral levels and adequate salt intake. Only unrefined salt can provide both of these factors.
Why Sea Salt is Now a Major Concern
Unfortunately, even certain unrefined salts can be a cause for concern. One of the most popular sources of unrefined salt is the ocean. Even though many people feel that unrefined sea salt is a healthy alternative to table salt, this is no longer entirely the case.
The oceans are being used as dumping grounds for harmful toxic poisons like mercury, PCBs, dioxin and microplastic particles. Reports of oil spills and nuclear fallout pollution in the sea are becoming more frequent.
And when it comes to plastic – it’s everywhere, with small pieces emerging in all our lakes and oceans. These microplastic particles can remain in the water for hundreds or even thousands of years and are showing up more and more in sea salt.
A large percentage of sea salt producers are now even refining their salt, which removes all the beneficial minerals. Most of today's sea salt simply isn’t as healthy as it used to be.
Without question, the best salt for seasoning and cooking is one that is unrefined and free from the pollutants and plastics proliferating our lakes and oceans.
An Extraordinary Ancient Salt Discovery in the U.S.
However you shake it, all salt comes from the same original source – the sea.
While some of the salt we consume is extracted from tainted seawater that’s still flowing today, some of it comes from under-ground salt deposits. These deposits were left behind by oceans that dried up years ago – sometimes, billions of years ago.
In the U.S., millions of years ago an ancient sea called the Sundance Sea covered what’s now the Western United States and the Pacific Northwest. Geologists believe this large inland sea formed around the middle of the Jurassic Period.
The Sundance Sea was a shallow epeiric sea, meaning it flooded and evaporated, flooded and evaporated over and over again. Each time, tons of salt deposits were left behind.
Over time, the earth shifted and the waters of the Sundance Sea completely retreated beneath the surface. This left a massive, underground mountain of natural, crystalized salt.
Because it’s covered with a layer of volcanic ash, this U.S. salt deposit has stayed protected from manmade pollution and microplastics for years and years. That means it’s as pure and natural as salt comes.
In this general area is where we discovered a unique purveyor of pure, unrefined ancient sea salt.
Unrefined Salt Untouched by Modern-Day “Fallout”
Sustainably sourced from a pristine, underground salt deposit in the state of Utah, Solspring® Real Salt® Ancient Sea Salt is the only ancient sea salt harvested in the U.S. from a single traceable source.
Protected under layers of volcanic ash and bentonite clay long before the earth experienced modern-day pollution, this pink salt is unrefined and offers more than 60 natural trace minerals, including potassium.
Delivered to you precisely the way nature intended – without additives or fillers – Ancient Sea Salt has a pure, subtly sweet flavor that’s perfect for everyday cooking, meal prepping and seasoning your favorite recipes.
Mined and produced exclusively in the U.S., soy- and gluten-free unrefined Ancient Sea Salt is delivered in easy-to-use pouches in two convenient granule sizes:
- Solspring® Real Salt® Ancient Fine Sea Salt is excellent for use as a table salt and for seasoning dishes after cooking when you want to add a healthy mineral to bring out the flavor of the food. This salt is a perfect option to add to boiling water for pasta and for most sweet baking recipes.
- Solspring® Real Salt® Ancient Coarse Sea Salt is perfect to enhance the flavors of foods, like watermelon, papaya, nashi pears, honeydew melon, pizza and even ice cream, as well as other foods that are enhanced with a stark salty flavor.
Real Salt® From the Only Traceable Source
To say that our Ancient Sea Salt partner, Redmond, is unique in their overall approach to mining and delivering the highest-quality unrefined salt goes without saying.
Redmond’s story began sometime in 1958, when two brothers were forced to abandon their drought-stricken farm and started their salt business.
The Redmond salt deposit is the remnant of the ancient Sundance Sea, where salt was trapped within the earth at the bottom of the sea and then, was pushed up over time near the surface of the town of Redmond, Utah.
Unlike other deep salt mines, the Redmond deposit was discovered only about 30 feet below the surface. Even though the deposit is close to the surface, it was covered by layers of volcanic ash and bentonite clay that protected if from erosion and the possibility of modern contamination and pollution.
Unrefined Solspring® Real Salt® Ancient Sea Salt is unsurpassed in its high-quality and consistency because of how our exclusive Redmond partner:
- Harvests and delivers unrefined, unprocessed natural salt from the only single traceable source of ancient sea salt in the U.S., near Redmond, Utah.
- Provides a pure, plastic-free salt with nothing added and nothing removed, with more than 60 natural trace minerals which gives the salt its unique color, flavor and potential nutritional benefits.
- Mines the salt using sustainable practices with an awareness of environmental impacts, including the use of room-and-pillar mines instead of open pit mines which helps to lessen the effect of mining on the surface of the earth.
- Makes extensive use of solar power to help power the mines and return excess power to the local grid, reducing their overall carbon footprint.
- Maintains a reclamation bond with the appropriate government entity. This surety bond includes an environmental and financial guarantee that the land being disturbed by the mine’s operation will be returned to its original or acceptable condition.
- Actively engages and contracts a third-party laboratory for analysis of trace elements found in the Ancient Sea Salt.
Salt is Essential for Life – Why Not Enjoy the Best?
Understanding that salt is essential for life and it’s a necessity when cooking and seasoning foods, it’s fortunate that there’s clearly not a shortage of table and cooking salt available.
However, if you want an unrefined, natural, flavorful and sustainable salt – there’s really only one choice – Solspring® Real Salt® Ancient Sea Salt.
Ancient Sea Salt not only offers you pure salt with more than 60 trace minerals – it’s also the only ancient sea salt traceable to a single underground source in Redmond, Utah.
Give your body the unrefined salt it deserves and your food the added flavor it needs, and order your Solspring® Real Salt® Ancient Fine and Coarse Sea Salts today.