We all do, eat salt, I mean, not suck it, unless you mean the licking we get from politicians and other smart men involved in politics and sundry other money-making activities, disguised as nation-building.
Salt is critical for life and because of its rarity up to a century ago, was invested with an importance far exceeding that inherent in its natural properties.
Unlike other dietary items, the only way you get salt is by eating salt itself. Animals instinctively know this. Most of the secondary and local roads in North America follow such a whimsical path that one could conclude towns were placed and connected haphazardly without any scheme or design. The roads are essentially widened footpaths and trails originally cut by animals in search of salt (much like our own country roads were based on the colonial need to get produce from the estate to the port). Animals, and probably primitive man, got their salt by finding it in the earth and licking it.
A salt lick in northern New York state had a wide road made by buffalo and the town that grew up around that salt lick is today known as Buffalo. Salzburg, the Austrian town, means “salt town” and most European cities were founded near saltworks. The first of the great Roman roads, the Via Salaria, Salt Road, was built to take salt to Rome. At times, Roman soldiers were paid in salt, which is the origin of the word “salary,” and the expression “worth his salt.” Salt was to the Romans what oil is to Westerners and many of their conquests followed the trail of salt and oil. The Roman word for a man in love was salax, or in a salted state, from which we get salacious. They salted their greens so we got salad.
The Chinese were the first to make salt by boiling seawater or, later on, brine, in iron pans. By 250 BC, they had begun drilling the world’s first brine wells and apart from salt, discovered an invisible substance coming out of the same wells which made people sick or sometimes caused enormous explosions. It was not until 1901, when oil was found in a Texas salt well, called Spindletop, that the mystery was solved. The Chinese had discovered a natural geological curiosity, salt, oil and gas are frequently found together.
Since then, salt has been taken from river deltas (the Nile); dried desert lake beds (the sebkhas of north Africa responsible for the growth of Timbutku); mountains (Cardona in Catalonia, Spain) and from innumerable salt ponds along the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic, the source of much of Venice’s power. Salt lakes have been found in North America, the Great Salt Lake and in the Middle East, the Dead Sea, known to the Hebrews as the Salt Sea. The Caspian, in Russia, is the world’s largest salt lake, fortunately for lovers of salted sturgeon eggs or caviar.
Salt is a chemical term used for a substance produced by the reaction of an acid with a base. In common salt, the base is sodium and the acid is chloride. When they combine, you get sodium chloride or salt.
Chloride is essential for digestion and respiration. Without sodium, which the body cannot manufacture, our hearts would not beat, our nerves would not work and our blood would not be able to transport nutrients or oxygen.
One level teaspoon contains approximately six grams of salt. Humans contain about eight ounces. Because we lose salt in sweat and urine, we need to take in three to four grams a day. The amount varies according to climate, culinary habits and occupation. Hot weather and heavy manual work increase salt requirements. That’s why salt fish became so popular with slave owners in the West Indies, perhaps explains our longing for salted foods, chows, peppers etc and started our problem with high blood pressure.
Before the days of refrigeration, people preserved food with salt. Hence, salt fish (really cod); salt hams, of old time Christmas fame, salt butter, salt cabbage or sauerkraut, salted cucumbers or pickles and salted milk or cheese.
Salt was taxed heavily. One of the reasons for the French Revolution was the French salt tax, the gabelle. Later on, in India, Mahatma Gandhi led a march to the ocean in protest against the British law that forbade Indians from making their own salt. On April 6, 1930, Ghandi violated British salt law by picking up a piece of salt crust in Dandi, on the coast of the Gujarat peninsula, and a movement was born that did not end until the British left India and many other countries.
