So, I was in a delicatessan last week that was proudly announcing its range of Himalayan sea salt, making a big deal about how pure it was. They then went on to comment that the bright pink colour of the salt was due to its high iron content. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Not very important in the grand scheme of things, I know, but I’d like to think that our food producers and retailers would be a bit more careful about how they use words like ‘pure’. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest…
Andy
Andrew Mitchinson (Associate Editor, Nature)
Excuse my geographical naivety, but just how many seas are there in the Himalayas..!?
Reagent NaCl plus a megarad of Co-60 is yellow-brown from F-centers. Give it as an unknown for identification of the colored impurity. KCl in kind is quite pretty. Next best is a small tab of Hastelloy C2000 sent to wet analytical.
Adding ionic iron as such to food ruins the flavor. NEVER in booze! Iron-fortified breakfast cereals… well, run a small magnet through the freshly glopped gruel.
Oddly enough, I have just come home from eating at a french cafe type place near Waterloo station in London, and I felt it necessary to copy out the text from their salt ‘container’:
“Sel Gris de l’Antlantic
Unrefined sea salt, hand-harvested in the salt marshes of Guerande."
It was definitely not white. It was a rather unappetizing shade of green, in fact.
I was amazed that I have ‘progressed’ from thinking that a Whopper from Burger King or a jam-donut-plus-a-banana were reasonable things to eat for supper, to going to organic, fair-trade cafes that are proud of their unwashed salt.