How clean is sea salt to add to your food?
DR. BLONZ clears the doubts
Dear Dr Blonz: I was at a large dinner party where they served sea salt with the meal. However, I have been avoiding modern sea salt if its source is evaporated seawater. I have travelled extensively to islands in the Caribbean where seawater is channeled into successive ponds on land, where it is evaporated to salt crystals and harvested for market. These islands typically have limited sewage treatment facilities, and waste with toxic components is discharged directly into the sea. This makes me suspect of salt made this way.
B.T., Scottsdale, Arizona
Dear B.T. : The FDA has a strict “good manufacturing practice,” or GMP, for sea salt, and products adhering to the guidelines earn GRAS status: generally regarded as safe. While there can be trace amounts of heavy metals such as lead and arsenic in evaporated sea salt, they tend to be below the level of concern.
In recent years, though, science has discovered a different potential issue with sea salts: the presence of microplastics. Check out this article in National Geographic, which found microplastics in 90% of the evaporated salts it checked from around the world (visit b.link/4xzzx).
This all makes the case for doing your homework before you buy. If considering a particular sea salt, read the product label about the purity of the water from which it was harvested. Get more answers by contacting the company, or checking online, to see if the brand has had purity issues in the past.
IF CONSIDERING A PARTICULAR SEA SALT, READ THE PRODUCT LABEL ABOUT THE PURITY OF THE WATER FROM WHICH IT WAS HARVESTED. GET MORE ANSWERS BY CONTACTING THE COMPANY, OR CHECKING ONLINE, TO SEE IF THE BRAND HAS HAD PURITY ISSUES IN THE PAST
(Ed Blonz, Ph.D., is a nutrition scientist and an assistant clinical professor at the University of California, San Francisco. He is the author of the digital book The Wellness Supermarket Buying Guide (2012), which is also available as a free digital resource at blonz.com/guide.)