Nutrition: Eat Good Salts!

Just like many aspects of healthy nutrition, salt is poorly understood.  Often, people try low-sodium diets and are told by medical professionals to reduce salts.  Although, too much of anything can be detrimental to health, one must stay educated and choose quality when purchasing products.  Salt is no exception.  There are many different kinds of salts.  White table salt, which seems to be most common, is the worst for you.  This kind of salt has undergone processes where trace minerals are removed and harmful chemicals are added.  When shopping, look for unrefined and unprocessed salts.  These salts retain the beneficial minerals that your body needs.  Salt is necessary for brain development and during exercise.  

Weston A. Price recommends not eating reduced fat or salt diets.  Instead, change the type of fats and salts that you are consuming.  You also want to avoid low-salt processed foods because the food industry often removes the salt and replaces it with MSG and artificial flavors.  These are bad for the body, specifically, the nervous system.  

The Ener-Chi Wellness Center states:
“Natural sea salt contains 92 essential minerals, whereas refined, adulterated salt (a by-product of the chemical industry) contains only two elements, sodium (Na) and chlorine (Cl). When cells suffer from a dietary deficiency of trace elements, they lose their ability to control their ions. This has dire consequences on the human body. Even if ion equilibrium is lost for just one minute, cells in the body begin to burst. This can lead to nervous disorders, brain damage or muscle spasms, as well as a breakdown of the cell-regenerating process.”

Wouldn’t you rather give your body the 92 essential minerals?!  That’s a huge difference!  So, the trade-off becomes more minerals and perhaps spending more compared to disorders, brain damage and fewer minerals for a cheaper price.  I chose to go with the beneficial mineral salts and pay a little extra.  Will you make the switch?

In short, salt helps the body with many functions and should not be eliminated from a person’s diet.  Choose high quality, unrefined, unprocessed salts, such as sea salt, celtic ocean salt, Hawaiian black sea salt, and himalayan salt.  Find these better options at your local health food stores or online.  Do not overuse good salts, but do add enough to flavor your food while cooking.  Remember, good food should taste good!  Our family loves using sea salt and Himalayan salt in our food.

Read about good fats in this post.  

​Resources:

Weston A Price Foundation.  www.westonaprice.org

​Ener-Chi Wellness Center.  16 Reasons Why Eating Unrefined Salt Benefits Our Health. http://www.ener-chi.com/eating-unrefined-salt-benefits-our-health/