What is Salt?

Sodium chloride is the common table salt we all know NaCl.   Salt can be found naturally occurring in many areas of the world in the rock mineral form Halite or in evaporated oceans (salt lakes) such as in Utah or it can be harvested from the ocean using a variety of techniques and methods. These days it is easy to find articles linking health and sodium intake.  The fact is an average North American requires approximately, 500mg of Sodium per day but probably exceeds 3000 mg per day.  Common Table Salt contains 98% NaCl (of which 40 % is Sodium and aprox 60% is Chloride) where as some of the naturally occurring “Sea Salts” can have as little as 77%NaCl and the rest of their mass made up with other trace minerals.  By this alone we can see that we can reduce our day to day sodium intake by switching from regular table salt to sea salts.  The next factor is many of the Sea salts are very light due to their flakey structure.  Some are even 50% lighter by volume then common table salts.  Seeing as we use salt by volume at the table not weight we can see that we can significantly reduce our daily sodium intake.

Wars have been waged over Salt and countries economic growth linked to its ability to produce and ship sea salts.  Without salt to use as a curing technique for fish perhaps NFLD would have been discovered several years later by the fishing fleets pushing their boundaries further and further across the Atlantic. There are ancient Chinese writings from 2000BC which are in great detail about several varieties of salts and their uses.  Salts where used by ancient Egyptians in the mummifying process.

It seems there was a small gap from the early 1900’s until approximately 1990 when all of the sudden Salts in their natural and un-refined state emerged as a trend.  Now well established in main stream culinary knowledge.  Artisanal sea salts and their use  will continuously grow.

Over and Above continuously seeks out responsible suppliers who are harvesting salts by traditional methods and creating positive economic growth in their regions.  We look only for the best quality and most unique varieties and will up date our collections annually.  Enjoy the sampling of salts from Cornish Sea Salt in England to the Baby Kechil from Indonesia.  The red Alea from Molokai Hawaii to the Black Volcanic Salt of Cyprus.