Why You Should Ditch Iodized Salt

When I was a teenager I worked in the kitchen in a rest home. There was one old lady who told me the same story every time she saw me. It would always start the same way.

“Where do you live?” Bertha asked.

“Ridgeway,” I would say, knowing what was coming next.

“I was in Ridgeway once. I didn’t know it was a town. We went there to catch a train to see the doctor because my mother had a goiter.”

I must have heard about Bertha’s mother’s goiter a hundred times. These days people don’t get goiters, or if they do, very rarely. Goiters are a result of iodine deficiency, which is why they starting putting iodine into table salt.

Like many ideas, it was a good one at the time that served a purpose whose time has come and gone. Anyone who eats a half way healthy diet including seafood is getting plenty of iodine. No need for the regular table salt, which, frankly, tastes harsh and if it makes any sense…is too salty.

Other than not really needing the iodine, there are other reasons to ditch the table salt. First, regular table salt is heavily processed, stripping away the nutrients. (This website claims that the salt manufacturers then sell the minerals they took out of the salt to nutritional supplement companies. I have not investigated this, but if true is an eye-opener.) Second, they also add anti-clumping agents, generally talc and silica aluminate. Talc is a known carcinogen (why it’s not in baby powder anymore), and aluminum is highly toxic to neurological systems (also a good reason to seek out aluminum free baking powder). Up to 2% of table salt is permitted to be these “fillers.”

Those are additions I’m just not looking for in my diet, so I strongly prefer sea salts. Even if there were no appreciable health differences between table salt and sea salt, sea salt just tastes better. It comes in fun colors (usually grey or pink, depending on where it came from and is due to the minerals that it contains) and a variety of textures.

Sea salt can be expensive, so I usually get mine as part of a bulk order through a food co-op that I’m part of. I do sometimes need to buy it on my own, and when I do I really like Celtic Sea Salt. It has a really mild flavor and I feel like it enhances the flavor of food the way salt should, instead of just masking blandness with saltiness.

What’s your favorite salt?