Writes “RonPaulJunkie”: “I want to offer an alternative viewpoint to the idea that ‘table salt is bad, but sea salt is health food.’ I asked my friend who is the nutrition director at Pritikin for his take. I’m paraphrasing his response:
“Sea salt is still sodium chloride, and the amount of minerals in a serving of sea salt is negligible.
“To be more specific, Wikipedia says sea salt is approximately 55% Chloride, 31% Sodium, 1.2% Calcium, 3.7% Magnesium, and 1.1% Potassium. So, if you take a teaspoon, which is about 6 grams: 31% is sodium, which is 1860 mgs of sodium, and 55% is chloride, which is 3300 mgs of chloride. Not much different than regular salt. “But let’s see how many minerals are in it:
“1.2% calcium is 72 mgs of calcium. RDA Is 800-1500. Negligible.
“1.1% potassium which is 66 mgs of potassium. RDA is 4000. Again, negligible.
“3.7% is magnesium, which is 222 magnesium. RDA is 400. So, to get the RDA of magnesium you could ingest 3300 mgs of sodium, which is toxic.
“If you eat well or take a supplement, you easily surpass the amount of magnesium you need, so the amount of magnesium in sea salt, of which you have to ingest too much sodium to get it, is irrelevant.
“Meanwhile, hypertension is by far the most diagnosed form of heart disease in America, with 60 million people diagnosed and another 45 million with pre-hypertension.”
11:59 pm on July 15, 2007
