Nature and man know two types of table salt: table salt and rock salt, a variety of which is sea salt. There are actually few differences between these two types, but the areas of application are radically different.
Human physiology is such that such an ordinary and seemingly inexhaustible element like salt becomes a vital component of daily existence, which is why it is so difficult to exaggerate the importance of the process of extracting and processing a product with a fairly well-known chemical name and formula NaCl.
Lack of salt in the body is an inevitable and direct path to the loss of vitality and death of a person, which is why, since ancient times, depriving a prisoner of the opportunity to receive a sufficient amount of salt from the outside was considered the most painful and cruel torture.
Sodium rock salt
In nature, sodium rock salt exists in the form of special minerals or sedimentary rocks containing a significant proportion of additional impurities and trace elements and occurring at a depth of one hundred to one thousand meters. Rich in iron, manganese and chromium, rock salt is white, gray, yellow or even brown in color due to impurities such as clay, bitumen, and iron oxides.
It is from rock salt, literally cut out of rocks and supplied to the surface of the earth by special conveyors, at special salt-processing plants by cleaning, and the usual table salt is obtained.
Rock salt is of great economic importance for many countries involved in the extraction and export of this element, which is widely used for the production of soda and chlorine. The food industry, aircraft construction, nuclear energy, dyeing, soap making - these are just some of the industries where rock salt is directly used in its original natural form.
Food grade NaCl
Milled salt, converted into cooking and often additionally enriched with potassium fluoride, entering the human body, as a rule, with food, is not only an important source of vital microelements, it:
- is a part of blood and lymph;
- regulates many metabolic processes;
- serves as an important source of hydrochloric acid, a component of many important secrets.
Refined rock salt is usually called table salt, it is white. Unrefined always has a shade, more often gray, which is given by the minerals in its composition.
The disinfecting and cleansing properties of salt make it possible to use this product for the prevention and even treatment of many diseases. Salt wraps, healing baths and even saline solution, which is widely used in medicine - all this is the merit of salt. What can we say about home and industrial canning, salting and other methods of cooking products that would be simply impossible if there were no ordinary table salt in the kitchen.
