But it is not just sodium or chlorine that our bodies need. We are drawn to the whole, to the sodium chloride( NaCl) system, which is what nature offers us in salt crystals. Battles were fought, trade routes developed, lands explored because of salt. Why? Perhaps it is its crystalline nature that we crave. Just as salt supports life processes on the physical level, it may do so on the nonphysical as well. Hauschka says that we add salt to foods“ not only to give them flavor but to make us think.” 50
It helps to crystallize our thoughts. Historically, the idea has some indirect support: Primitive, intuitive societies rarely use salt, but the Greeks, an intellectual, thinking society if there ever was one, used it with great respect. An example closer to home: I noticed that my children invariably began to demand a saltier taste in their foods, refusing the unseasoned baby pap, at about the age at which they started to speak, and therefore also to think abstractly. Our nutritional need for salt has been established at ½ gram daily for the average adult. Three grams( ⅗ of a teaspoon) is still considered a reasonable intake. But the average American consumes twelve grams daily, maybe even eighteen— three or more teaspoons! This amount includes not only the salt added to the cooking pot or sprinkled at the table but the NaCl used as preservative or flavoring in cheeses, processed meats, canned vegetables, ketchup, snacks such as salted nuts and potato chips, and so on. Additional sources of sodium are baked goods— because of the sodium bicarbonate in the leavening— preservatives based on sodium compounds, and even club soda. If a little bit of mineral matter in the form of salt is essential to our lives, stimulating digestion, strengthening and activating us on all levels, an excess of salt, as we’ re finding out, can cause much trouble. Not only does it promote tightness and hardening, but it acts like a rein or a dam, holding in the fats. A high sodium intake, it has been found, interferes with the body’ s ability to clear fats from the bloodstream. 51
Excess sodium is involved in kidney trouble, water retention, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and possibly stomach cancer and migraine headaches. But before we place all the blame on salt generally, let us not overlook the fact that the commercial land salt generally available today is higher in sodium than traditional sea salt, both because it is land-mined and because of the various sodium compounds that are added to it. The presence of these additives must have an effect on the body, perhaps deleterious. The salt that is obtained by evaporation of seawater contains about 78 percent sodium chloride( NaCl) plus 11 percent magnesium chloride and smaller amounts of magnesium and calcium sulfates, potassium chloride, magnesium bromide, and calcium carbonate. Land-mined salt from Utah, on the other hand, contains 98 percent NaCl( plus 0.2 percent iron, 0.31 percent calcium, and smaller amounts of sulfur, aluminum, and strontium). USDA standards for“ table salt” or“ food-grade salt” are set at no less than 97.5 percent NaCl, no more than 2 percent calcium and magnesium, and up to 2 percent of“ approved additives.” The latter include potassium iodide to supplement the iodine-deficient diets of people who have no access to fish, seafood, or sea vegetables; dextrose, a type of sugar, added to keep the iodide from oxidizing; sodium bicarbonate, to keep the salt from turning purple after the addition of the first two ingredients; and either sodium silico aluminate, calcium carbonate, sodium ferrocyanide, green ferric ammonium cytrate, yellow prussiate of soda, or magnesium carbonate as anticaking or crystalmodifying agents. Food-grade sea salt processed in France and obtainable in this country in health food and specialty stores has a high NaCl content( 99.94 percent) but no additives; 52 that in itself makes it a more desirable item in my opinion. Certainly there has not been enough research to determine what effect long-time use of, say, yellow prussiate of soda may have in the presence of sodium bicarbonate and iodide.( Sufficient iodine for healthy thyroid function can be obtained by a modest consumption of fish or sea vegetables. Remember just one fast-food meal provides 200 percent of the R. D. A.!) If we return for a moment, to our earlier model of nutrient proportions( see chapter three, this page), we will see that a high intake of salt must be accompanied by a correspondingly high level of protein and carbohydrate intake. Therefore, salty natural food substances such as miso, tamari, shoyu, pickles, and condiments can cause a condition of chronic hunger, which can be alleviated by decreasing the salt intake and increasing the protein somewhat by using more beans and fish. On the spiritual level, a lack of salt, if we are not ill,“ eventually takes the ground out from under the spirit in each one of us.” 53 Without grounding we cannot build, and thus our personal evolution comes to a halt. Excess salt, on the other hand, may cause either a shriveling and hardening or a bloating and holding as the soul rigidifies, holding on to the past, and turns into a hardened pillar.