Which Salt is the Healthiest? - Piggy's Delight (EN)

【Which Salt is the Healthiest?】

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What is Salt?

Salt is a chemical compound, sodium chloride, which is one of the most important minerals for our body to maintain the proper balance of water and minerals.

If it's exessively consumed, it might be detrimental to our body leading to carddiovascular diseases, kidney diseases, stomach cancer and osteoporosis, while if your intake of sodium is too low, it may also have a negative effect on your body causing severe dehydration, fatigue, irritation, muscle weakness and even coma.

As you know, in the modern diet, it's pretty easy for us to consume salts more than we should do as food industries have developed a lot.

Here is the list of food high in sodium:

Processed foods including pizza, pasta, sausages, cheese
Fast foods
Snacks
Ready-to-eat meals
Canned foods

To prevent from having high-sodium related diseases, you might want to eliminate or reduce the amount of those foods.

Types of Salts

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Salts are harvested from salt mines by evaporating seawater. Each salt has slightly different minerals, though all types of salts are sodium chloride.

Table Salt aka Refined Salt

Table salt is the form of salt used most commonly. This salt is mined from salt deposits and is highly refined. In the process, most of minerals are removed. In 1924, the manufactures started adding iodine to salt as a prevention from goitor and hypothyroidism which are caused by iodine deficiency. And still now, some of table salt are added iodine. But I think, because we can consume iodine-rich foods from whole foods, such as seaweed, some fruits, vegetables and legumes, it's not necessary to choose table salt for iodine. In other words, I would suggest you avoid table salt because of its properties and how it's processed. Any refined foods are not good for our health.

Sea Salt

Sea salt is also sodium chloride, but the difference with table salt is that sea salt generally contains a little amount of minerals that you might not be able to obtain from table salt. Since sea salt isn't highly refined, the crystals are coarser and darker in color than table salt . I would say sea salt tastes a bit stronger like sharp salty than other types of salts.

Himalayan Pink Salt

Himalayan pink salt is harvested in Pakistan. Pink color is due to impurities, which means Himalayan pink salt has slightly higher amount of trace minerals including iron, zinc, calcium, potassium and magnesium, compared to table salt and sea salt.

Personally, this is my favorite salt for cooking because it tastes mildly salty not as strong as sea salt, and also it may contain more minerals than others, though there's no evidence to support this statement unfortunatelly. But I just like its saltiness.

Kosher Salt

The unique feature of this salt is that the structure is "flakes". Kosher salt isn't different from other salts in terms of nutrients. But Kosher salt typically doesn't contain any additives, such as iodine and anti-caking agent. The texture and flavor may let you have either sides, "like or dislike".

Kala Namak

Have you ever heard of Kala Namak aka Black Salt? Kala Namak is an Indian salt used along with some spices for making masara, said my Indian friend. It is a black or grayish salt, but when it's ground the color changes to pink. As vegan, Kala Namak is a secret ingredient! Due to high surfur content, it has eggy flavor and you can use it to imitate egg dishes, like tofu scrambles and omlets! So you might want to add Kala Namak in your favorite egg dishes! Key point is to add Kala Namak at the end of cooking for remaining the eggy smell and flavor in the dish.

Which Salt is Healthier?

Although there's almost no scientific evidence that shows which salt is better to use in cooking for our health, I would recommend you choosing sea salt, Himalayan pink salt or Kosher salt as regular cooking condiments because they are less refined and are slightly higher in micronutrients than table salt, and Kala Namak for enything that you want its eggy taste and flavor, as far as I considered.

I always stock 2 tyoes of salt which are Himalayan Pink Salt for use in general cooking, and Kala Namak for making vegan egg dishes :)

Here is some of my creations with Kala Namak to fake eggs 🌱