An Article Worth its Salt (I Hope)

by Webb Williams

When I was a little kid, my dad gave me a curious explanation for the strange phenomenon of rain with sunshine. “If it rains while the sun is shining,” Dad said, “the devil is beating his wife ’cause she put too much salt on his food.”

Whenever I’m in a sunshower I remember that expression, but I’ve always loved salt and used entirely too much on my food—especially at the table. I looked forward to making ice cream so I could enjoy nibbling on the rock salt. I even put salt on watermelon and cantaloupe!

My cardiologist recently changed my thinking about salt, advising me to limit my salt intake or my heart might attack me. Preferring not to engage in a fight with my body I certainly wouldn’t win, I decided to cut back on it. I started researching the substance we all abuse: table salt—sodium chloride—composed of 40 percent sodium and 60 percent chloride. It’s that 40 percent sodium that’ll getcha.

On the face of it, the subject of salt sounds about as interesting as watching grass grow, but it has a remarkable history. I learned quite a bit about this commonplace condiment we can’t live without.

Some Salty History

Salt was in general use waaaaay before history as we know it began to be recorded. Some 10,000 years ago, give or take a few years, the city of Jericho was founded as a salt trading center. It was treasured as a flavor enhancer and it preserved food, enabling travel over vast distances without spoilage. Salt became a highly valued trade item in the ancient world.

Even before the Egyptians created hieroglyphics, they preserved their dead in the dry, salty desert sand. Recently, more than 5,000 years after their burial, cadavers—not mummies—have been discovered that still have skin and flesh. The ancient Egyptians realized the preservative qualities of salt and were the first civilization to cure meats, salt fish and render otherwise inedible foods like olives fit for human consumption.

4000 B.C. saw the first actual documentation of salt use in Egypt, which traded with Greece and Rome, leading to its vital economic importance in those civilizations. Ancient Greece traded salt for slaves far and wide, and the expression “worth his salt” resulted. “With a grain of salt” meant, and still means, “of little value” or “not to be taken seriously.” Salt was considered so valuable in the Roman Empire that it was used as currency—and Roman workers and soldiers were paid with salt: “salarium argentums,” as the practice was called in Latin, evolved to our word “salary.” I suspect that the main problem with salt as money might be rain. One can picture a worker in ancient times getting caught in a rainstorm while coming home with his day’s wages—a melted bag of salt. Explain that to the wife!

About 4,700 years ago, “Peng-Tzao-Kan-Mu,” the earliest-known treatise on pharmacology, was published in China. It is said to have contained information on more than 40 kinds of salt, including descriptions of two methods of extracting salt and putting it in usable form that are amazingly similar to processes used today.

Salt is extracted from underground beds either by mining or by solution mining using water or brine. In solution mining, the salt reaches the surface as brine, which is then turned into salt crystals by evaporation.

In America, boiling brine was a method used as far back in recorded history as 1654, when the Onondaga Indians of New York refined salt from salt springs. At the time the U.S. Constitution was drafted, colonial Americans did the same in iron kettles, and Americans continued using that method through the War of 1812.

In 1862, during the Civil War, full-scale open-pit and quarry production began. The first underground salt mineshaft was started in 1869. When drilling reached rock salt deposits, conventional underground mining soon followed.

Politics, Wars and Salt

Armies and navies throughout history needed salt to maintain horses, cauterize wounds and preserve food. It was considered a strategic necessity. Alliances were formed and wars were fought over it. A standard preparation for war in early Europe was acquiring and salting meat and fish to supply the troops. The British navy considered salt of strategic importance in their domination of the seas, and served their sailors corned beef and salted codfish. In the 16th century, a Dutch blockade of Iberian salt mines led directly to Spain’s bankruptcy. Venice won a war with Genoa over salt, and climbed to economic prominence through a salt monopoly. Queen Elizabeth I warned England of its dangerous dependence on foreign sea salt. Thousands of Napoleon’s troops died during his retreat from Moscow because, due to a lack of salt, their wounds would not heal. In 1777, the British Lord Howe was jubilant when he succeeded in capturing General Washington’s salt supply.

Several revolutions erupted in part over excessive salt taxes. China’s government was one of many that had a salt monopoly and created a significant revenue source with a salt tax. Salt smuggling and revolt ensued as China’s imperial government was toppled in the early 20th century. A salt tax in France that increased from 14 times the cost of production to 140 times the cost of production was a contributing cause of the French Revolution.

In 1930, India’s Mahatma Gandhi defied British salt laws and taxation with his famed non-violent methods that would change the government’s policies. British colonial law dictated that all salt must be bought from British producers. Gandhi began a two-hundred-mile walk with many of his followers to the seashore, where salt naturally formed by seawater evaporation. British law said that this natural salt was illegal to harvest. Gandhi challenged this stupidity, picked up the salt and was immediately arrested, as he knew he would be.

One other historical note. The first Native Americans “discovered” by Columbus in the Caribbean were harvesting sea salt off the coast of St. Maarten—probably to make Margaritas with.

And by the way…the SALT talks (Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty) between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War had absolutely nothing to do with table salt. However, the Russian practice of punishing prisoners by sending them to work in the salt mines of Siberia is the basis for the expression “back to the salt mines.” Next time the boss tells you to get back to work, just take solace that things could be worse.

Avery Island’s Hot Salty Tale

Louisiana’s Avery Island isn’t really an island at all. It’s a hill—152 feet high—in an area of wetlands near Lafayette. The property occupies roughly twenty-two hundred acres and sits atop a deposit of solid rock salt thought to be deeper than Mt. Everest is high.

In 1859, Edmund McIlhenny, a New Orleans banker, married Mary Eliza Avery, the daughter of Judge D.D. Avery. They settled on Avery Island, not knowing how turbulent, and yet eventually enormously successful, their lives would become. According to a family tradition, McIlhenny met a gent who gave him some red peppers he brought back from Mexico. They added quite a zing to food, and McIlhenny planted some of the seeds to grow his own peppers. During the Civil War, the newlyweds fled to Texas when the salt operation on the island was commandeered by the Yankees for the precious strategic commodity. After the war, on their return to Avery Island in 1866, the McIlhennys found that although much had been destroyed, the pepper plants were flourishing. Edmund decided to experiment with them to come up with a hot-sauce recipe.

Salt was a prime ingredient in his recipe, and he produced 658 bottles of the red gold that was to be called Tabasco Sauce‚. Today, the company produces half a million bottles a day and sells it throughout the world. Guess where he got the salt…

I guess you might say the McIlhenny family was lucky, but it was the determination of the patriarch to create something unique that was the driving force in their overwhelming fortune. The company’s product is a worldwide culinary icon, the salt mine flourishes still to this day, and, as luck would have it, vast oil reserves were found on the property. The accumulative oil production on Avery Island through the years is somewhere in the neighborhood of 34 million barrels. Nice neighborhood. And the good news—to add to the good news and the other good news—is that the total proven reserve is only about half depleted. The rich keep gettin’ richer and the smarter rich keep getting’ even richer than that!

Turning Salt Into Oil

The wars fought over salt throughout history were much like our modern day wars over oil. The oil business was actually set in motion with the help of salt deposits. The search for oil in the late 1800s and early 1900s used the technology and methods pioneered by salt miners, even to the degree that they looked for oil where salt domes were located. In a salt dome, salt pushes up, causing the rocks to arch and break. Oil may accumulate above or along the sides of such a formation.

The technology of drilling rigs and wells was primarily about salt. It all began in 1901 when Patillo Higgins and Anthony Lucas ignored the advice of geologists and drilled around a Texas salt dome called “Spindletop.” The first great oil gusher roared in at 10:30 a.m. on January 10, 1901 on Spindletop Hill in a Texas cow pasture four miles south of Beaumont—and changed our lives forever. Bet gas was a lot less than three bucks a gallon in those good ol’ days!

“When It Rains, It Pours”

In 1911 in Chicago, Joy Morton’s Morton Salt Company began adding magnesium carbonate, an anti-caking agent, to salt, creating a table salt that flows freely, even in rainy or even humid weather. The company wanted to have a slogan that expressed that selling point, so some copywriter whiz came up with “Even in rainy weather, it flows freely.” More clever phraseology eventually prevailed, and the current world-famous slogan has been with us ever since. The little girl with an umbrella in a rainstorm, spilling the stuff all the way home, has gone through five makeovers through the years. That little-girl icon is now 93 years old. And the company’s main facility, a huge solar saline operation, is located in the Bahamas. Weather’s better there than in Chicago.

American salt manufacturers like Morton began iodizing salt in the 1920s in cooperation with the government after people in some parts of the country were found to be suffering from goiter, an enlargement of the thyroid gland caused by an easily preventable iodine deficiency.

Sidebar: A Dietitian Weighs In On Salt

Dian Navoy, nutritionist at St. Tammany Parish Hospital, gave me the skinny on salt from a health perspective.

Sodium, a mineral that occurs naturally in foods, is essential for health. It keeps a proper balance of water in our bodies, helps to transmit nerve impulses, regulates blood pressure and helps to maintain normal muscle activity.

Adults should consume no more than 2,300 milligrams per day, which is about one teaspoon. Feelin’ guilty yet? For someone with high blood pressure, even less is recommended. The average salt intake is actually around 4,000-6,000 milligrams per day.

About 75 percent of sodium consumed is in the processed foods that we eat. Put that bag of potato chips down and read on…

Sea salt has become a popular alternative for people on a low sodium diet, but offers no health advantage. It actually contains roughly the same amount of sodium, which is the component of salt that can cause high blood pressure.

Kosher salt usually is coarser mineral salt, which may be mined anywhere. It doesn’t come from the Dead Sea and a rabbi does not “bless” the salt.

Tips to reduce salt and sodium:
• Buy fresh, plain frozen or canned “with no salt added” vegetables.
• Use fresh poultry, fish and lean meat, rather than canned or processed types.
• Use herbs, spices and salt-free seasoning blends in cooking and at the table.
• Cook rice, pasta and hot cereal without salt. Cut back on instant or flavored rice, pasta and cereal mixes, which usually have added salt.
• Choose “convenience” foods that are low in sodium. Cut back on frozen dinners, pizza, packaged mixes, canned soups or broth, and salad dressings.
• Rinse canned foods, such as tuna, to remove some sodium.
• When available, buy low-salt, reduced-salt or no-salt-added foods.
• Choose breakfast cereals that are low in sodium.
• Look for frozen meals with less than 600 mg. of sodium.

So put that saltshaker down, eat healthier and live longer, dear reader. (Gotta’ go make my lunch now. I’ve got a huge cravin’ for a sinfully delicious BLT. Don’t squeal on me, will ya?)

Sidebar: Salt Lore

• To show his disciples how valuable they were, Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth.” The saying is still used today to describe someone highly prized.

• The phrase “take it with a grain of salt” refers to little worth, dating back to when Roman workers and soldiers were actually paid in salt. A ‘grain’ was pretty low pay, even back then.

• Bad luck from spilling salt goes back to ancient Roman times, too. It is said that Leonardo da Vinci used that superstition in his classic “The Last Supper,” originally portraying Judas having knocked over a salt dish. And we all know how his luck turned out.

• Throwing salt over your left shoulder refers to the ancient superstition that evil (the devil) lurks over one’s left shoulder, and tossing it in his eyes might get him the hell off your back.

• Shaking salt on a bird’s tail to catch it always cracks me up. I mean, if you’re close enough to put salt on a bird’s tail, you’re probably close enough to catch it, right?

• “Old Salt” and “Salty Dog” are nautical slang words for an experienced sailor. The Salty Dog drink is made with vodka or gin and grapefruit juice.

• “The cure for anything is salt: sweat, tears, or the sea.” -Isak Dinesen, author

• “Let there be work, bread, water, and salt for all.” -Nelson Mandela

• “At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine in that respect.” -Herman Melville

• “A wise woman puts a grain of sugar into everything she says to a man, and takes a grain of salt with everything he says to her.” -Helen Rowland, writer

• “Business is the salt of life.” –Voltaire

• “Nobody likes to have salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth.” -Rebecca West, author

• And the last salty word goes to Yogi Berra, who advises us to “Take it with a grin ßof salt.”