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Comment by mitchtbaum | Hacker News Reader

That may be true, but at the same time, iodized salt doesn't have nutrients that mined and farmed salt have.

You can iodize mined / farmed salt. There's plenty in the supermarket for your organic local artisanal salt needs...

I thought iodized salt was just regular salt with iodine added? What nutrients would it lack?

According to [0]: actinium, aluminum, antimony, arsenic, astatine, barium, beryllium, bismuth, boron, bromine, cadmium, calcium, carbon, cerium, cesium, chlorine, chromium, cobalt, copper, dysprosium, erbium, europium, fluorine, francium, gadolinium, gallium, germanium, gold, hafnium, holmium, hydrogen, indium, ##iodine##, iridium, iron, lanthanum, lead, lithium, lutetium, magnesium, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, neodymium, neptunium, nickel, niobium, nitrogen, osmium, oxygen, palladium, phosphorus, platinum, plutonium, polonium, potassium, praseodymium, protactinium, radium, rhenium, rhodium, rubidium, ruthenium, samarium, scandium, selenium, silicon, silver, sodium, strontium, sulfur, tantalum, tellurium, terbium, thallium, thorium, thulium, tin, titanium, uranium, vanadium, wolfram, yttrium, ytterbium, zinc and zirconium.

Whereas, according to [1], iodized salt has these "chemicals used to keep the salt from absorbing water and caking", which dilute the mineral content per gram: magnesium carbonate, calcium silicate, calcium phosphate, magnesium silicate, and calcium carbonate.

0: https://www.livestrong.com/article/534033-what-are-the-84-mi...

1: http://www.madehow.com/Volume-2/Salt.html

The causality actually goes the other way. The Morton Salt Company revolutionized salt by adding minute amounts of clay to prevent caking, which is one of the advantages that allowed them to achieve a near monopoly in salt production at the time iodine deficiency became understood. That meant that iodizing Morton's salt was basically iodizing all the salt.

However, the iodine is independent of the anti-caking additives. You can have iodized salt which still cakes up when it is humid, but why would you want to?

Most of those things are not micronutrients humans need.

Farmed salt of today is contaminated with anything that is in the sea, including microplastics. If you don't want "chemicals" and want "natural" avoid farmed salt.

That's a really good point. I'm definitely in favor of processing, just picky about the end results. Removing microplastics sounds like a great process. Improvements like this to salt farming could have huge benefits.

> Removing microplastics

How do you propose to remove grains of plastic the size of salt crystals from the salt? And once done is it affordable or commercially viable?

Validation of density separation for the rapid recovery of microplastics from sediment ?

http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2017/ay/c6ay02...

Also: The presence of microplastics in commercial salts from different countries (nature.com)

253 days ago

223 points

56 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14073368

as the discussion on the article mentions particles > 1mm are still pretty large.

People will absolutely flip shit if this exact same list was titled "84 chemicals you will find in your tap water". I'm still not sure if the article is a brilliant parody.

Speaking of bad stuff in your tap water: http://www.dhmo.org/

You do realize that ``these "chemicals used to keep the salt from absorbing water and caking", which dilute the mineral content`` are most likely contained in Himalayan salt? All their elements appear in the list.

On top of that, not even your [0] claims that most of those elements are necessary nutrients for humans.

So what's the Recommended Daily Allowance for the important nutrient thallium? Or polonium? Half the stuff you've listed are toxins, not nutrients.

I think I'm going to stay home today because I'm feeling polonium deficient.

have you considered bad-mouthing the FSB or KGB?

Also, nitpick, those are elements, not minerals. I mean, some elements can also be minerals (eg, gold) but you show me a list of the elements I'm going to tell you they're elements, not minerals. In fact, they're basically all the elements - they're short most of the transuranics (except for Neptunium and Plutonium), as well as all of the Noble gasses.

If Himalayan sea salt actually contains detectable quantities of basically all the elements naturally occurring in all creation, that's goddamn fascinating (although I'd probably say "bullshit" just on that point), but I'm not sure why it makes the salt good to eat.

Oh no, a nanogram reduction of dietary silicon is going to leave me crippled with malnutrition! Whatever will I do?

Plutonium? Seriously?

Total crap.

You need to take some introductory chemistry and human nutrition classes.

I'll say! If anyone thinks himalayan salt is a source of valuable nutrients like mercury, lead and (radioactive) plutonium, they lack basic scientific literacy.

Is there some sort of advantage to consuming aluminum, cadmium and neptunium? One causes Alzheimer's, one is a battery, and the third is radioactive.

Someone can correct me but I'm going to guess you'd just piss most of that out.

wolfram is an element now? Maybe get your health info from somewhere a little more reliable.

Wolfram is an alternate name for tungsten, and the reason tungsten's chemical symbol is W.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten

Like what?

Magical woo particles found only in the Himalayas.

Some salts, like sea salts, do contain other minerals, although whether they're at nutritionally significant levels is of course another question. And adding iodine to sea salt wouldn't remove whatever other compounds were in it. Wikipedia has this:

Unrefined sea salt contains small amounts of magnesium and calcium halides and sulfates, traces of algal products, salt-resistant bacteria and sediment particles. The calcium and magnesium salts confer a faintly bitter overtone... Algal products contribute a mildly "fishy" or "sea-air" odour, the latter from organobromine compounds. Sediments, the proportion of which varies with the source, give the salt a dull grey appearance. Since taste and aroma compounds are often detectable by humans in minute concentrations, sea salt may have a more complex flavor than pure sodium chloride when sprinkled on top of food.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt

Oh, don't get me wrong, I love me some French grey fleur de sel, which has a bit of a fun flavor from the clay in it. Smoked salt is amazing, too.

It's the people who think thallium is an important nutrient in Himalayan salt that are of concern to me.

... and microplastics.

Dirt?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com