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ferrocyanide (yellow prussiate of soda) in quantities as high as 13 parts per million. Aluminum compounds have been found to be adverse to human health, and have been linked to conditions such as Alzheimer’s. Anticaking agents can also make the salt difficult for the body to properly process, as they inhibit the absorbability of the salt. In addition to anticaking agents, corn syrup is often added to refined salt in the United States as a binder for iodine and possibly also to cut the bitterness that refined food-grade salt naturally possesses. Often, about 0.04 percent of industrially refined iodized table salt is in fact dextrose. Substances such as calcium oxide and calcium carbonate can also be added to table salt to increase its whiteness.

Koshering salt (also known as kosher salt) is usually not fortified with potassium iodate or iodide. However, a variety of additives such as sodium ferrocyanide can be added to koshering salt. Kosher certification relates to food-handling conformance to kashrut, or Jewish dietary law. It has nothing to do with a salt’s intrinsic healthiness. On the contrary, the major brands of koshering salt available on the market are entirely refined and in no way resemble the natural salts eaten in the days of Jonah, Abraham, and Moses.

SALT AND PUBLIC HEALTH POLICY

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it —Upton Sinclair

Salt is food, and like any food, it is an object of our obsession with health. To say that industrialized populations have a love-hate relationship with salt would be an understatement. Salt has become the subject of intense debate among health experts and the American public at large. There are different sides to the salt health debate: first and foremost, there’s the antisalt camp, which seeks to change the consumption through public health policy. In reaction to this camp’s calls for a salt-restricted world, there is also a camp that argues that a public health policy focus on salt reduction cannot make us healthier.

The antisalt camp asserts that eating too much salt leads to or exacerbates high blood pressure (hypertension), and thus increases the risk of heart disease. They summarize the current body of scientific research as follows: High blood pressure is a major risk factor associated with heart disease. If you consume a lot of salt, your blood pressure will go up anywhere from 1 to 5 millimeters of mercury (mm/Hg) before returning to its presalt level. If you consume a lot of salt, and then keep on consuming a lot of salt, your blood pressure may remain elevated. Therefore, if you consume too much salt on an ongoing basis, you are at increased risk for high blood pressure and, by extension, for heart disease.

Some health organizations are recommending hypertensives and normotensives alike consume less than 1,500 milligrams of sodium per day, which translates to 3.8 grams (or ¾ teaspoon) of refined table salt. At present, Americans consume between 4,000 and 5,000 milligrams of sodium per day, 77 percent of which comes from food processing and restaurants. Twelve percent is naturally occurring in food. Eleven percent is discretionary, added during cooking (6 percent) and at the table (5 percent). In other words, if we stopped eating all restaurant and processed foods and doubled the amount of other foods we ate, we’d consume somewhere around half the salt we eat today.

Some medical experts believe sodium has been singled out unnecessarily. Dr. Miles Hassell, Medical Director of the Integrative Medicine Program at Providence Health & Services, says, “Salt intake in moderate amounts can be perfectly healthy. Total salt intake appears to be less critical in the setting of a high potassium (and probably magnesium) intake, such as when a whole food diet is consumed.” Other research, such as a Harvard study of 60,000 nurses, suggests calcium may play a key role in lowering blood pressure. Yet other studies focus on the importance of magnesium.

Dr. David A. McCarron, who was Director of the Hypertension Program