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The salt of the earth

The salt of the earth The salt of the earth by Douglas Blake In earlier days sharing your salt with someone meant sharing your freindship, and the spilling of salt was taken as a sign that the friendship was going to end. However, salt has long been used as a protection against evil, and the throwing of salt over the shoulder cancels the evil effect of upsetting the salt. It is perhaps natural that a vast amount of superstition has grown up around salt as it has been in use for thousands of years. Ancient records speak of people far from the sea who never used salt with their food, and in some parts of America and India its use was introduced by Europeans. grained and of high purity is used for seasoning our food and replacing the natural salts which are lost The most abundant source of the world's supplies of salt is the sea. It has been estimated that during the cooking. Coarser grades of salt are used if all the oceans of the world were dried up the pile for fish curing, salting meat, and as a brine for refrigeration. Salt is also used in the dairy and of salt which would be left would occupy a volume pickle industries and in glass and soap manufacture. of roughly 44 million cubic miles, that is, a block In ancient times cakes of salt were used as money. about 14 times the volume of the land mass of Europe. If rock salt is sufficiently pure it is crushed, An enclosed sea contains more salt than an open ground, sieved, and then sold without further sea of the same latitude. Such a sea is the Dead Sea treatment. Impure salt is processed by a liquid to which has an area of around 340 square miles and dissolve the impurities, the salt then being washed, filtered, dried, and then ground before being sold. contains roughly 11½ thousand million tons of salt. The River Jordan, ending its journey in the Dead Rock salt is mined by the usual excavation Sea adds yearly approximately 850,000 tons of salt methods or by drilling wells and then pumping in to this total. water to dissolve the salt. The resulting solution is then treated by similar methods to natural brines. In the world's geological past the evaporation of sea water formed rock salt deposits and this source This process is accomplished by channelling of salt has been used since ancient times. concentrated salt solutions into huge ponds. Depending on the size of the manufacturing plant The salt mines of Northern India were worked these evaporating pans vary in area from around before the time of Alexander the Great, but the 300 square feet to over 50 acres. Solar evaporation mines of Wieliezka in Poland are among the most famous in the world. From east to west the mines is often used to extract the salt but in countries measure 2¼ miles and from north to south approxi­ where this is impracticable, such as England, the brines are evaporated by artifiical heat. mately ½ mile. They reach a depth of 980 feet with interconnecting passages totalling over 65 miles. Roughly 120 million tons of salt is produced in There are 11 shafts and seven different levels, one the world every year but the natural deposits are above the other and joined by flights of steps. so vast that there is little chance of them ever being exhausted. Salt has many uses. Table salt which is fine http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Nutrition & Food Science Emerald Publishing

The salt of the earth

Blake, Douglas
Nutrition & Food Science , Volume 76 (2): 1 – Feb 1, 1976
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Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
Copyright © Emerald Group Publishing Limited
ISSN
0034-6659
DOI
10.1108/eb058651
Publisher site
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Abstract

The salt of the earth by Douglas Blake In earlier days sharing your salt with someone meant sharing your freindship, and the spilling of salt was taken as a sign that the friendship was going to end. However, salt has long been used as a protection against evil, and the throwing of salt over the shoulder cancels the evil effect of upsetting the salt. It is perhaps natural that a vast amount of superstition has grown up around salt as it has been in use for thousands of years. Ancient records speak of people far from the sea who never used salt with their food, and in some parts of America and India its use was introduced by Europeans. grained and of high purity is used for seasoning our food and replacing the natural salts which are lost The most abundant source of the world's supplies of salt is the sea. It has been estimated that during the cooking. Coarser grades of salt are used if all the oceans of the world were dried up the pile for fish curing, salting meat, and as a brine for refrigeration. Salt is also used in the dairy and of salt which would be left would occupy a volume pickle industries and in glass and soap manufacture. of roughly 44 million cubic miles, that is, a block In ancient times cakes of salt were used as money. about 14 times the volume of the land mass of Europe. If rock salt is sufficiently pure it is crushed, An enclosed sea contains more salt than an open ground, sieved, and then sold without further sea of the same latitude. Such a sea is the Dead Sea treatment. Impure salt is processed by a liquid to which has an area of around 340 square miles and dissolve the impurities, the salt then being washed, filtered, dried, and then ground before being sold. contains roughly 11½ thousand million tons of salt. The River Jordan, ending its journey in the Dead Rock salt is mined by the usual excavation Sea adds yearly approximately 850,000 tons of salt methods or by drilling wells and then pumping in to this total. water to dissolve the salt. The resulting solution is then treated by similar methods to natural brines. In the world's geological past the evaporation of sea water formed rock salt deposits and this source This process is accomplished by channelling of salt has been used since ancient times. concentrated salt solutions into huge ponds. Depending on the size of the manufacturing plant The salt mines of Northern India were worked these evaporating pans vary in area from around before the time of Alexander the Great, but the 300 square feet to over 50 acres. Solar evaporation mines of Wieliezka in Poland are among the most famous in the world. From east to west the mines is often used to extract the salt but in countries measure 2¼ miles and from north to south approxi­ where this is impracticable, such as England, the brines are evaporated by artifiical heat. mately ½ mile. They reach a depth of 980 feet with interconnecting passages totalling over 65 miles. Roughly 120 million tons of salt is produced in There are 11 shafts and seven different levels, one the world every year but the natural deposits are above the other and joined by flights of steps. so vast that there is little chance of them ever being exhausted. Salt has many uses. Table salt which is fine

Journal

Nutrition & Food Science – Emerald Publishing

Published: Feb 1, 1976

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