The many types of salt - a guide

Many different types of salt can be found on average supermarket shelf these days, even more at up-scale supermarkets and gourmet stores.

If the product range is wide, the price range is crazy. A packet / bottle of salt can cost anything from under $1 for ordinary salt, to tens of dollars for gourmet salts, to more than $100 for Korean bamboo salt sold through multi-level marketing.

There is no need to pay big money for relatively healthy natural sea salt or natural rock salt. Higher price does not always reflect better quality.

A friend of mine recently paid quite a few dollars for a packet of Pansalt®, thinking it to be healthy. He got a scolding from his wife, haha!

To avoid scoldings from spouses and to avoid burning unncessary holes in your pocket, here is a guide to the many different types of salt.

Types of salt - refined

Click here to understand the diffrerences between refined and unrefined types of salt.

How do you tell the difference when you are buying? Firstly, if it is really cheap, like a few cents or a dollar for a packet, it is most probably refined. But this depends on where the salt is produced. In some countries, unrefined natural salt can be obtained quite cheaply.

Another tell-tale sign is when the salt is super white, super fine and flows super smoothly from the salt shaker. This suggests that the salt is not only refined, but also contains chemical additives like anti-caking agents. These are the types of salt you should avoid, no matter how cheap or expensive they are, because they are harmful to health.

Look also at the words on the label:

• Salt probably means refined salt.
  
  
• Table salt is definitely refined, plus it contains chemical additives.
  
  
• Morton salt is just a brand name. There is nothing special about Morton salt, except that it has added iodine (see below). Moreton has both iodized refined salt and iodized natural sea salt.
  
  
• Iodized salt is salt with iodine added. In most cases, it is refined salt with iodine. The iodine helps prevent iodine-deficiency diseases like goitre and cretinism (physical and mental retardation). While this is important, iodized salt is no better than refined salt in other aspects. In some cases, natural sea salt may also be fortified with iodine and it will probably be called iodized sea salt. Click here to learn more about iodine deficiency and iodized salt.
  
  
• Kosher salt, despite its premium price, is also refined salt. The salt crystals are formed in a different shape and this gives a different texture to food when Kosher salt is sprinkled on top, that's all. Otherwise, Kosher salt is no different from other types of salt that have been refined and stripped of essential minerals. And it is not a good idea to sprinkle salt on food anyway. Click here to learn more about Kosher salt.
  
  
• Sea salt or rock salt may or may not be refined, since refined salt may be derived from both the sea or rock salt deposits. You will be surer off if the label says natural / unrefined sea salt
  

Types of salt - natural, unrefined

Among the many natural types of salt, there are actually some differences in the extent of refining.

• Grey sea salt is totally unrefined sea salt. As the name implies, it is slightly grey or yellowish in color. The most well-known of is Celtic Sea Salt, but there are other varieties as well. Judge from the color and the taste. It has a slight bitter taste, which comes from magnesium chloride.
  
  Incidentally, magnesium chloride, called nigari in Japanese or lushui in Chinese. is used for making traditional tofu. Modern tofu is more often made with other ingredients like calcium carbonate.
  
  
• White sea salt is minimally refined, usually with the magnesium chloride, magnesium sulphate and a few other substances removed but with the bulk of other minerals intact.
  
  Among macrobiotic practitioners, who probably care more about the quality of salt than other groups of people, there is some debate over whether Celtic or white sea salt is better. Click here for a further discussion about minimally refined vs unrefined sea salt.

Lake salt

Lake salt comes from inland salt-water lakes, or saline lakes. These are formed when water flowing into the lake cannot leave and when the water evaporates, it becomes salty. There are not many salt-water lakes in the world but some of them, like the Dead Sea, are even more salty than sea water.

The composition of sea water is almost constant throughout the world although there are some variations in the composition of natural sea salt, depending on where the salt is harvested and how it is processed.

In the case of saline lakes, however, there is an even greater variation depending on the locality. For example, the salt harvested from Lake Baskunchak in Russia is about 99.8 percent sodium chloride - almost as pure as refined salt, versus about 95 percent sodium chloride in natural sea salt.

Still, it might be better than refined salt if it is natural lake salt, unprocessed and without chemical additives. About 80 percent of Russia's salt production comes from Lake Baskunchak and would be considered ordinary salt by the Russians. Nothing special.

Other types of salt from inland saline lakes, however, are often marketed as special lake salts, with a premium price tag. I have read, for example, (Australian) chefs rave about the distinctive flavour of certain types of Australian lake salt. But because of the high price, I have not tried and cannot comment on them.

Rock salt / Himalayan pink salt

Rock salt, also known as halite, are salt deposits found in the ground, similar to, eg, coal or oil deposits. These rock deppsits were formed by seas and salt-water lakes that dried up hundreds of millions of years ago. Because the salt is so, so old, it is extremely pure, as there was no pollution in the world back then!

Most rock salt is processed into refined salt. When you buy regular refined salt, you usually would not be told which types of salt - sea salt or rock salt - the original source was. Because of growing interest in natural sea salt and other natural types of salt, however, rock salt is increasingly sold as it is - just crushed into smaller grains - without refining or processing.

In a way, this makes rock salt even more "pure" than natural sea salt, which still needs to be processed from sea water. At the same time, however, rock salt usually contains other "impurities" in the form of minerals that are either not present in natural sea salt, or present only in much smaller amounts.

These other minerals or "impurities" give rock salt distinctive colours and flavours. Various types of salt harvested from rock deposits may be light blue, dark blue, purple, yellow, orange, pink, red, grey or even black in colour.

Most of these are sold as exotic gourmet salt at equally "exotic" prices, like over $10 for a small bottole containing just 100 or 200 grams of salt. There is, however, one that is cheap and good. Click here to learn more about Himalayan pink salt, which is the salt I currently use for cooking.

One advantage of rock salt over sea salt is that rock salt is naturally dry and does not absorb moisture as easily, so there is no need to add anti-caking chemicals to prevent it from clumping together.

Salt substitutes

Another group of products, like Pansalt® and other high potassium salts, I would call them salt substitutes rather than classify them as among the different types of salt. These products can help reduce high blood pressure. But their chemical composition is so drastically different from that of regular salt that I would not consider them to be "salt". Read here to learn more about types of salt substitutes.