Himalayan Salt
14/4/19
You may have seen Himalayan Salt marketed widely as a food additive, health treatment or even used in decorative lamps. The salt is mined in the Punjab areas of Pakistan and India in the Himalayan foothills. It often has an unusual pink hue, but in reality it can range from transparent to off-white to red. It is this red colour that makes it attractively different, but in reality like most table salts it is still around 98% sodium chloride. That remaining 2% though may be very different.
Edible salt has small added amounts of iodine, sodium aluminosilicate or magnesium carbonate. Some Himalayan salt has harmful impurities so not all of it is edible, it may contain harmful amounts of magnesium, potassium or calcium so you should not consume it unless you are confident it has been correctly labelled as fit for human consumption.
There are numerous health claims about it, for instance the Global Healing Centre says: "Himalayan crystal salt has matured over the past 250 million years under intense tectonic pressure in an environment that's free of toxins and impurities...[its]...unique cellular structure allows it to store vibrational energy'. Which is of course nonsense on stilts. Like most animals we need salt to give us trace amounts of certain chemicals. Common table salt is controlled, regulated and often has added minerals that we might otherwise lack in our diets. Like all things though the dose makes the poison and it should be consumed as part of a healthy diet.