Sea salt : Myth or minerality

Every weekend I get asked about How our Opito Bay natural sea salt is different. So much so that I’m going to have to put the record straight. You see the problem is there’s a lot of information out there. Some of it truth, some of it half truth and some of it myths or even lies. I trained as an agricultural scientist so much of my University Education was science based. This was back in the days before celebrity influencers and Drs paid to promote a certain food, drink or way of life.

So lets start with Salt: NaCl - good old sodium chloride. The element that’s indispensable for life. 0.4% of the human body is composed of salt. Physicians agree we need between 2.6 grams of salt a day to be healthy. That’s about a teaspoon. But the real debate for me is not so much about the sodium chloride but the other minerals or not we consume when we use salt.

You see mineral rich sea salts contain essential trace elements and minerals in various quantities. Table salt is typically less than 1% minerals. Himalyan Rock salt 1.0% minerals. Malden and the likes of Marlborough flaky sea salt around 1.1%

The reason for this is that all these salts with the exception of Himalayan are processed salts. Its the processing that strips almost all of the good minerals away. So don’t be fooled. Even if your salt comes from the sea it doesn’t mean it hasn’t been heavily processed. As for Himalayan-it all comes from one very, very large mine in Pakistan. However its a rock salt and very different in texture but essentially pretty low in minerals.

So where does Opito Bay sea salt differ? Our salt is unprocessed, not boiled or chemically treated and so the minerals inherent in the pure clean sea water we use to make our NZ sea salt is trapped naturally in the slow formation of the crystals using just sunshine. This traditional process has been around for millennia and you’ll be familiar with it if you’ve visited salt pans in Europe.

The second point and quite literally the main point is that our sea salt has a 6% mineral content! That’s a factor 6x the minerals in Marlborough flaky, Himalayan or table salt. Why is this important. Its because alot of folks are focusing on salt these days but are getting some pretty dud information.

Its this super high minerality in our natural NZ sea salt that adds heaps of flavour to our salt. Ask any customer, and we have thousands out there, and they will confidently tell you it tastes different. The taste comes from the minerals inherent in clean pure sea water. And why we harvest our sea water up here in the remote eastern Coromandel.

But hang on! As I said earlier not all seas salts are made equally either. In my world there are artisan solar salt farmer like myself who use only a filter and sunshine to produce there sea salt. We produce the highest minerality sea salt because of our methodology and understanding that within sea water there are great essential elements that add flavour, depth and quality to our sea salt.

Next there’s what I call the “boilers”. No less artisan these guys harvest sea water which they boil into a brine. Around 26% salinity. Its at this point they carefully heat the brine to 65C where salt formation happens. These small scale types of operation are common across Europe and the Americas. The salt produced is generally of a finer flakier nature but in boiling the water much of the minerality and flavour of the salt is removed. Just think about it if you are on city supplied water-in many places there is serious calcification of your kettle element…and that’s just from “pure" H2O Imagine if you started boiling sea water…your element wouldn’t last long!

So boiled sea salt lacks the flavour and minerality of pure sea salt.

Next there’s the commercial manufactures of sea salt. They get there salt from a variety of places. Say the Himalayan Mountains…We’ve all heard of Himalayan Rock salt. This salt is mined on an industrial scale in Pakistan. I like many thought the colour meant high mineral concentrate and hence it might be better for you. Well I don’t think that now! The minerality of Himalayan Rock salt is only slightly above processed table salt.

The other irony is that here in NZ there’s a big corporate that turns sea water into salt. It says on the website it can take from 2-4 years for the water to evaporate off these ponds but they are very keen to tell you in their marketing that the salt comes from the clear deep blue water of the Southern Ocean. Well the water does come from the sea and is pumped into the ponds from an inlet about 20 meters off shore. It’s not pretty but that’s not the worst of it. When we visited we witnessed hundreds of wading birds and many different colours of algae growing in the ponds. Not unexpected. However the salt that had been recently harvested was piled in gigantic heaps for further processing. It was a dark grey black colour and far from pure. Their website states that their solar salt is not fit for human consumption! Click here. Oh and it gets worse…the company is owned by a Chinese Multi-national. This extensive type of operation without the hot drying winds of say the Mediterranean means that evaporation is slow and naturally the salt is full of unwanted nasties.

So commercial operators like this are forced to process the salt heavily to remove contaminants to make it fit for human consumption. In doing so they remove the essential elements that are naturally present in sea salt. The result is a bitter tasteless salt which is often iodized to stop it clumping and to support the nations requirement for more iodine rich food. [NZ soils are naturally low in Iodine]

So how do we know our sea salt is so minerally? Opito Bay New Zealand sea salt is tested using XRF Spectrum chem-analysis by Verum Industries in Christchurch. An independent testing laboratory. That’s how we determine the minerality. Our salt tests extraordinarily high in the elements. Magnesium potassium and calcium.

This is a function of the environment where we harvest our salt which is a diverse marine ecosystem with plentiful shellfish and kelp. There’s lots more to sea salt and I’m going to explore this more in the next blog. Plus a side by side comparison with Celtic sea salt. Stay Salty!