Sea salt

Sea salt is salt that is produced by the evaporation of seawater. It is used as a seasoning in foods, cooking, cosmetics and for preserving food. It is also called bay salt, solar salt, or salt. Like mined rock salt, production of sea salt has been dated to prehistoric times. There is no scientific evidence that consuming sea salt instead of more refined sodium chloride salts has any health benefit. Commercially available sea salts on the market today vary widely in their chemical composition. Although the principal component is sodium chloride, the remaining portion can range from less than 0.2 to 10% of other salts. These are mostly calcium, potassium, and magnesium salts of chloride and sulfate with substantially lesser amounts of many trace elements found in natural seawater. The moisture content can also vary from less than 1 to over 12%. Though the composition of commercially available salt may vary, the ionic composition of natural saltwater is relatively constant. Sea salt is mentioned in the Vinaya Pitaka, a Buddhist scripture compiled in the mid-5th century BC. The principle of production is evaporation of the water from the sea brine. In warm and dry climates this may be accomplished entirely by using solar energy, but in other climates fuel sources have been used. Modern sea salt production is almost entirely found in Mediterranean and other warm, dry climates. Such places are today called salt works, instead of the older English word saltern. An ancient or medieval saltern was established where there was: In this way, salt marsh, pasture (salting), and salt works (saltern) enhanced each other economically. This was the pattern during the Roman and medieval periods around The Wash, in eastern England. There, the tide brought the brine, the extensive saltings provided the pasture, the fens and moors provided the peat fuel, and the sun sometimes shone. The dilute brine of the sea was largely evaporated by the sun. In Roman areas, this was done using ceramic containers known as briquetage. Workers scraped up the concentrated salt and mud slurry and washed it with clean sea water to settle impurities out of the now concentrated brine. They poured the brine into shallow pans (lightly baked from local marine clay) and set them on fist-sized clay pillars over a peat fire for final evaporation. Then they scraped out the dried salt and sold it. In rural areas of Sichuan, China, these traditional salt production methods lasted until industrialization in the 20th century. In the colonial New World, slaves were brought from Africa to rake salt on various islands in the West Indies, Bahamas and particularly Turks and Caicos Islands. Today, salt labelled 'sea salt' in the US might not have actually come from the sea, as long as it meets the FDA's purity requirements. All mined salts were originally sea salts since they originated from a marine source at some point in the distant past, usually from an evaporating shallow sea.