Salt

SALT IN HISTORY

Prehistoric Man was used to obtaining the salt he needed from eating animal meat. As he turned more to agriculture and his diet changed he found that sea-salt from sea water, inland springs or saltwater lakes gave his vegetables the same salty flavor he was accustomed to with meat.

By the sixth century BC salt was being extracted from mines in various locations. The first city in Europe, Solnitsata, in Bulgaria, had a salt mine, providing the area now known as the Balkans with salt since 5400 BC. Even the name Solnisata means "salt works".

Around Lake Yuncheng in Ancient China each year, people would gather the valuable salt square crystals on the surface of the water when the lake's waters evaporated in the summer sun. As a consequence there were numerous battles fought over control of the lake.

The Chinese Png-tzao-kan-mu, ("The Classic Herbal") the first ever treatise on pharmacology dating to 2700BC, records more than 40 types of salt. It describes two methods of extracting and processing the mineral.

The first great Roman road was the Via Salaria (salt road), leading from Rome to the Adriatic Sea, where salt was gathered.

The Romans paid their soldiers and civil servants with salt, a valuable commodity. This stipend was called salarium, from which we get the word ‘salary’.

In Leonardo da Vinci's painting of The Last Supper, Judas Iscariot is seen behind a spilt salt cellar. Hence the belief that spilt salt is unlucky.

The voyages of Christopher Columbus were said to have been financed from salt production in southern Spain.

Salt production in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt (1670)

In the 18th and 19th century, blocks of salt were used as currency in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia).

Because of a treaty signed in 1795, the state of New York still gives 150 bushels of salt to the Onondaga people every spring

SALT PRODUCTION

We eat 6 per cent of all salt production. Of the remainder, 12% is used in water conditioning processes, 8% goes for de-icing highways and 6% is used in agriculture. The other 68% is used for manufacturing and other industrial processes.

In 2013, total world production of salt was 264 million tonnes, the top five producers being China (71 million), the United States (40 million), India (18 million), Germany (12 million) and Canada (11 million.

Because salt is cheap and plentiful in many parts of the world, yet bulky and expensive to transport, it is a heavily regional commodity. China, the world's biggest saltmaker, used the 71m tonnes it produced in 2013 at home.

Open pan salt making in the town of Bo Kluea, Thailand. By Takeaway 

The city of Detroit sits on top of a working salt mine, and that the mine has provided road salt for most of North America since 1910.

The lowest grade of gritting salt for de-icing roads generally sells for around $40-50 a tonne in America and Britain.

Like mineral salt, production of sea salt dates to prehistoric times. Generally more expensive than table salt, it is commonly used in gourmet cooking because it is believed to taste better. Discerning gourmets pay the equivalent of $70,000 a tonne or more for fleur de sel, the highest-quality French sea salt, harvested by hand at picturesque locations.

FUN SALT FACTS 

Salt is mostly sodium chloride, the ionic compound with the formula NaCl, representing equal proportions of sodium and chlorine.

The chemical formula of the salt that makes solid cheese smooth and creamy spells out NaCHO.

Salt is the only rock that can be used by humans as food.

Bolivia has the world’s largest salt flats, at 10,582 km2 (4,086 sq mi).  Located there is The Palacio de Sal Hotel and Spa, a hotel built with a million blocks of salt.

Palacio de Sal Hotel. By Phil Whitehouse 

Eating too much salt can kill you. In fact, salt-eating was a method of suicide in ancient China.

A baby cannot taste salt until it is 4 months old.

When crops are grown in places that don't rain enough, it destroys the land because of too much salt.

Salt absorbs water. If you pour a handful of salt into a full glass of water, the water level will actually go down rather than overflowing the glass.

All of the Earth's oceans combined contain enough salt to cover all the continents to a depth of nearly 500 ft.

If all the salt in the oceans was removed, it would fill a cube with sides 175 miles (280km) long.

Sources Food For Thought by Ed Pearce, Daily Express, The Economist