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Nutrients Product Reviews

REVIEWS: Salt Reviews

This vital nutrient must be balanced with other minerals.

Sodium gets a bad rap — but is it warranted? After all, sodium is vital to your health.

In fact, the evidence that sodium restriction improves cardiovascular outcomes is appearing to be weak. Instead, balance between important minerals, such as potassium, calcium, and magnesium, may be much safer and more effective than reducing sodium intake.

“There is sound evidence that a low sodium diet leads to a worse cardiovascular prognosis in patients with systolic congestive heart failure or type 2 diabetes mellitus.”

https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(13)00594-9/pdf

In hypothyroidism, it’s wasted by the body in high amounts — meaning extra supply is critical. Remember, many chronically ill have some amount of hypothyroidism.

Ultimately, if sodium intake makes one feel worse, it’s likely that higher intakes of potassium and other electrolytes is needed — not necessarily less sodium. When sodium is “high” it’s usually a bandaid approach to simply lower sodium intake. Instead, increase the intake of its supporting cofactor nutrients.

Therefore, sodium is not the bad guy. What do we look for when choosing an excellent source of salt?

Important Variables To Consider

  • No caking agents
  • No iodine (I want to supplement and track this nutrient myself)
  • No pink color
  • No plastic (there are reports of sea salt products and tiny plastic pieces)
1

Sea Salt

Sea salt is made from evaporating ocean water (or salty lake water, such as the Dead Sea).

Sea salt will contain a small amount of trace minerals that may benefit health. These minerals can also improve the salt’s taste.

For the most part, sea salt is an excellent choice for health. There’s only one major downside: Our modern oceans are so filled with plastic. This means that tiny plastic particles are more often appearing in our sea salt — and yes, we’re eating that plastic.

PROs: 

  • No fillers
  • No iodine
  • No pink rust

CONs:

RATING:  9.0/10

2

Pink Himalayan Salt

Pink salt used to be very popular at my house. 

Then came some fears that the pink color in pink salt was due to iron which was oxidized — rust. Now, oxidized iron isn’t a great form of iron to put in the body for most people.  If the body needs iron, there are much better ways to get it.

Upon further research, it appears the amount of iron contained in pink salt is incredibly tiny. In fact, it may only represent about .02% of the DV — if an entire day’s salt intake (3g or so) were from pink salt.

What about the extra trace minerals? Yes, pink salt contains just about every mineral and metal that can be found in the earth’s crust. However, some studies suggest the amounts of trace minerals in pink salt are so minuscule that pink salt is no more helpful than sea salt. Some products claim to have adequate iodine levels — this is a misleading marketing claim.

PROs:

  • No fillers
  • No iodine
  • No plastic
  • Fun (pink color!)

CONs:

  • Tiny amount of oxidize iron (probably not a big deal)
  • No iodine (some claim to have adequate iodine — those claims are wrong)

RATING: 9.2/10

3

‘REAL’ Salt

Made in Idaho, USA, REAL Salt is a great product. 

It’s mined from underground — much like pink Himalayan salt —  and boasts a slightly higher content of trace minerals than sea salt.  This also means it does have some oxidized iron “rust” in it, but significantly less than pink salt — which we’ve already established is negligible, anyway. 

Being mined underground means it is pure of plastic contamination.

PROs:

  • High quality source
  • Higher trace minerals
  • No iodine
  • Incredible taste.  10/10 for taste
  • No plastic particles

CONs:

  • Miniscule, barely-detectable levels of iron

RATING: 9.5/10

4

Kosher Salt

Image result for kosher salt

Kosher salt is all about the size of the crystals — which are perfect for drawing out moisture from meat.

This makes it excellent for the koshering process of meat.

Kosher salt is free of iodine (which is a necessary nutrient), has no fillers (anti-caking agents), and often has a larger granule size (for the koshering process).

PROs:

  • No fillers
  • No iodine
  • No pink rust

CONs:

  • Usually made from sea salt, therefore could have plastic. I do question, however, if the larger particle size filters out more plastic than products with finer crystal size.

RATING: 9.0/10

You really can’t go wrong with a simple Kosher salt.

5

My Recommendation

I happily use sea salts, REAL Salt, or Kosher salt. The difference between the three is not large enough to fret over.

The biggest trade-off is that REAL Salt has a small amount of rust (oxidized iron), and sea salt has a small amount of plastic. How each might affect someone is hard to say — and nobody out there is an authority on that.

Read more.

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