salt

Question
Evelyn, I have a question about salt. I always thought salt was bad for the blood pressure. Yet in cooking, chefs use a lot of salt, they say it brings out the flavor of foods. They use kosher salt. Is this salt just as bad for blood pressure as regular salt, and am I correct in thinking teaspoonfulls in recipes is too much?  Thank you.
~~Sara

Answer
Dear Sara,

You are quite right: too much salt raises your blood pressure and causes kidney damage. I do not know what kosher salt is - if it's something from the Jewish kitchen, but there is a distinct difference between one salt and the next if you become expert at tasting or are interested in energetic processes. The main distinction lies between common kitchen salt and more "organic" (i.e. not refined and no Iodine added) salt, naturally dried (either from mountains or sea), with an emphasis on coming from an unpolluted source. These aspects may make one salt more or less "kosher" in my experience.

It is the history of salt which makes salt so varied. Salt is per definition old (eroded mineral matter). It has a different energetic property and mineral content depending on its geographic location and how it has lain or travelled over the million years. (I use up to five different types of salt in my kitchen for that reason).

But all of them contain sodium chloride: the salty bit that is bad for you if you take it in excess. What is excess, then? An entirely salt free diet is not possible, it is even in milk. Our fluids are saline if only mildly so (but think of tears, sweat) and we need salt intake to survive, while drinking sea water will kill us. It's a precarious balance.

The real power and sustenance of salt lies in a more mysterious truth. Its crystalline quality encourages us volatile souls to precipitate and become more earth-bound. Indeed it is an illness of modern times that we have become too earth-bound, clogged up by consumerism, bogged down in materialism, and the demand for the taste of salt has proportionately gone up in the post-World WarII years, reflecting a warped relationship between heaven and earth. The old and ancient Alchemists called all materialising (chemical) processes "Sal" (Latin for salt). Think of the expression "salt of the earth", which refers to somebody of core significance. Salt consolidates and in esoteric terms, its quality (not the actual substance) is quintessential to the formation of thought (a crystallisation process in a sense). Salt used to be almost as precious as gold in the first days of trade, and like silk and spices whole routes were set up to export/import it. Without it one would starve in winter (since it was the only preservative of meat and other perishables which only grew in summer (pickling).

Salt in itself has no real flavour, aside saltiness. The varying mineral content of so-called organic salt may lend one salt a slightly different "hint". Its special, magical, property is to bring out the flavour in other products: it "fixes" the more volatile properties that go into making delicate and sophisticated flavours.

All that is required to enhance a pan or dish of food for four is a PINCH of salt, literally tens of GRAINS (just 5 or 6 of coarse rock salt!). Recipes for school dinners, mess halls, and festival catering may contain teaspoonfuls of salt, but mark how these meals are often too salty. In baking, a teeny-weeny pinch is added to cakes and biscuits standard, to bring out the nutty, earthy flavour of wheat, but if you use salted butter (a product I cannot recommend) then don't add that pinch! However, few of us are able to appreciate when we are exposed to an excess of salt because all supermarket food is horribly over-salted. Salt is even added to products which really do not require it. One of the reasons I recommend you buy fresh not tinned or pre-processed foods: the added salt really does cause health problems in the long run.

Salt used to be a preservative and now it mainly caters to our spoiled taste buds which need ever greater "hits" for the sensation of taste (or what we think is taste, but is actually only a "salt sting"). Where you can avoid adding salt, DO. I tend to advise not salting vegetables or rice, e.g. if you serve them with a well seasoned sauce. To ensure you(r family) cannot get too much salt NEVER have a salt-seller on the table. Above all, learn to season flavoursome dishes with herbs and spices. A good cook, like a culinary chef, always uses "salt to taste" which means taste THEN add, then taste and only add an itsy bit more if really necessary for the full pallet of the dish to become enhanced.

May you enjoy your meals and try life with a lovely pinch of Himalaya or French-Atlantic salt.
Evelyn

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