Rock Salt or Sea Salt

[Roscoe]

In an ad for a supermarket I saw them advertising potato chips garnished with Sea Salt and I wondered why they should point out that it's Sea Salt rather than Rock Salt. Surely salt is salt and it makes no difference where it comes from - it's still salt - NaCl. So why should they make out that they are like night and day?

[piroska]

Food fashion. It's trendy.

Both kinds of salt are made of sodium chloride. However, the process in which they are harvested is different and does produce some small differences (link: Spiceography).

Sea salt contains some minerals. That's because sea salt is what we get when ocean water is left in the sun to dry.
Rock salt, on the other hand, is already found in solid form and is simply mined. This type of salt is also known as halite and often comes in larger crystals or has a coarser texture.

All of it should be used with caution in NZ, incidences of goiter have increased since plain old iodised salt got replaced with the trendy ones.

[Roscoe]

Thank you, Piroska.

While the harvesting processes may be different, surely it is only the minerals that are harvested with the salt that is the difference, the chemical composition of the salt has not changed and therefore there is little difference, chemically, between the two.

But you are right. You need to be consuming iodised salt as our soil is iodine deficient and we need it in our diet, in particular, to prevent goiter.

[notechyet]

See here:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/progr...l-heavy-metals

[Roscoe]

See here:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/progr...l-heavy-metals

Yes, but that's pink salt. Our salt is white. The only thing pink about our salt is the colour that the sea water turns when evaporating the sea water in the ponds at Lake Grassmere Salt Works about 30km south of Blenheim.

[gary67]

Salt who uses it, we very rarely if ever use salt in anything, absolutely hate the stuff and since its in all processed food anyway I see no need to add more.

[Roscoe]

Salt who uses it, we very rarely if ever use salt in anything, absolutely hate the stuff and since its in all processed food anyway I see no need to add more.

Quite agree. We rarely use salt now - only occasionally on chips from the local takeaway and on crisps which started this thread.

[zqwerty]

One of the symptoms of lack of salt is cramping in the legs after exertion.

[gary67]

One of the symptoms of lack of salt is cramping in the legs after exertion.

This last week have ridden 26km on the bike and did a 2 day back country trip with roughly 800m of ascent without cramps so I think I'm all good on that front.

[zqwerty]

Yes maybe it's not hot enough in NZ most of the time to show up this warning but in Northern Rhodesia, where I grew up, the tennis players were always having to take salt tablets or else they would get the cramps after an afternoon or weekend of playing tennis in the Sun.