Salt : A World History

A comprehensive overview of human evolution thru the use of Salt. Very well written, educational and entertaining. I will never look at Salt the same way again! I highly recommend this historical adventure. I would love to do a tour of many places discussed in the text. Good job!

This book is well worth reading... as it gives a different perspective to world history... Salt... which for most of history has been an expensive commodity. The Gandhi history as it pertains to salt was especially helpful as most books skim over the reasons for the protests without clearly explaining them. However as you reach the end of the book you feel as if the author has reached his word limit and concludes without completing the work. Some of the concluding comments are on anti-caking agents (magnesium carbonate, calcium silicate and sodium hexacyanoferrate II) and additives (Fluoride & Iodine). [...] However the book fails to expand on any of this... cyanide? Not worthy of some explanation? Fluoride? Not even a mention of any controversy? It's effect on enzymes ie. cooking. Yet Iodine (much less controversial) gets a fair bit of attention. Go figure? The book fails to mention the one anti-caking agent that is probably the most common: aluminium. The book really ought to have included a bit more on coloured salts... which often have a magnificent taste... but instead it's jammed up at the end and disposed of in an almost cursory manner. Missing bits: It is intriguing that a book might be written about salt and the chemical formula is not drawn anywhere ie. NaCl (or Na+ Cl- in solution). Good detail... missed the punch line? The author misses the reason for fermentation... which is healthy because it donates many healthy bacteria to support the gut ie. it's an excellent probiotic. The dismissal of May butter while noting that it was reputed to have health properties was annoying. May is the month that spring occurs in the northern hemisphere... and that will also correspond with maximal Vitamin K2 production... which is almost certainly why butter has a reputation as a health food in this month. It was enjoyable to go for a ride around the globe... including a huge amount of detail on Chinese salt making... a country that so many authors skip when writing a book. Likewise the photos of some of these unusual slices of history were great eg. chinese drilling rigs which drilled to 4400 feet with only bamboo. Although you're left wishing there were even more of them. There was a fair bit of detail about cooking with salt: various historical recipes many of which helped capture the period under discussion brilliantly. The writing style was engaging throughout the book so you won't get bored. If you're curious you'll enjoy the book because you'll learn lots of stuff about salt you didn't know. :-)

I am a qualified Nutritionist and Naturopath and I appreciate reading books that are rich in meaningful information. I bought this book because I had increasingly noted that the concerns we have about table salt are unfounded. So I decided to do some research. To get a good handle on salt, I needed to go back in time (hence this book) to understand the use of salt throughout history, and then relate that to more recent studies that were conducted. There were as many studies claiming salts benefits and there are many claiming salt is bad. So that did not give me any confidence that everyone was singing from the same hymn sheet. Whenever I see conflicting study outcomes, I immediately look to see whether we are comparing apples with apples, and we were not. You see, there are actually 3 types of salt and one is very good and two are not so good. Most studies did not even point this out, or realised that we humans eat three very different types of salt. So let me try to make sense of this: I have certainly come to the conclusion that many others have already come to, that the benefits of eating generous amounts of the right salt to suit one’s taste is justified, and much better than being paranoid and limiting my intake. But we need to choose the right salt. What I did learn was that ocean salt is about 85% Sodium Chloride and the remaining 15% is this wonderful suite of over 84 minerals. The thing is, the salt processors remove the 15% part which is the really valuable portion, and sell it as Magnesium Oil. Once you understand that there are three types of salt (1) pure ocean salt (2) ocean salt with the 15% minerals removed and (3) tables salt being pure sodium chloride plus added free-flowing additives and iodine, then it all become very clear. If you eat the pure 100% sea salt you can have as much as you like (of course being sensible) whilst the others (#2 & 3) should be restricted. The 'bottom line' is that many people are not getting enough salt which causes dehydration, and this insufficiency of water in the human body has all sort of consequences such as thicker blood (ie blood with high viscosity) and reduced metabolic function caused by low body fluid levels. This can have all sorts of consequences such as fatigue, increased colds and flu's, and hundreds of other ailments as the body struggles to move fluid around efficiently. The old line that salt is high in sodium and sodium increases blood pressure is a very simplistic explanation and one wonders how the population was ever duped into believing it. Years ago before we had refrigeration we would store our meats in barrels of salt and we ended up consuming a lot of salt. Whilst not suggesting we go back to those times, I would suggest that for most healthy people that 5-8 grams of salt per day for an adult is fine and will not increase blood pressure. Only those on salt-restricted diets need to concerned about limiting salt. I have written a short paper about Salt and Magnesium Oil and some readers may like to download it to help understand the benefits of salt. You can download it here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B4XGKNybHkRkb1lZT2N3VTgyXzQ&usp=sharing

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, but unfortunately there were several irredeemable problems with this book. First, Mark Kurlansky doesn't cite anything in this book. He has a multiple page bibliography broken up into the useless sections of "Salt History," "Food and Food History," "Science and Science History," and "Articles." Each sections creates dozens of sources, but you never know where the various facts spread through the 449 page book come from. Secondly, I feel like his book was an accurate history on the role of salt in human history. But when Kurlansky touched on topics I know intimately, he got some major details wrong. On page 97 of the Penguin paperback edition, he writes "milk coming in contact with an animal skin soon curdle." He's talking about milk reacting to the rennet, but that's from the stomach linings of calves and lambs. Not just any old skin. He later expands upon this point and mentions rennet later, but it was the first in a series of troubling statements. On page 400 he seems downright freaked out by the concept of salt licorice, and doesn't seen to understand that the Scandinavians used ammonium cloride-based salt licorice (which immediately opens your sinuses) dating back to when licorice candy was used by apothecaries for treating colds. My last major quibble I unfortunately can't find the page number for, so I'm going to pull a Kurlansky and just not cite it. I'll paraphrase, too. He was talking about the use of sodium nitrite and how there are health concerns associated with it, but no one stops using it, "for the questionable end of making ham pink." Well, the reason why sodium nitrite is used in hams and bacon and other smoked meats is to prevent botulisim. Botulisim thrives in wet, oxygen-deprived environments....like inside a ham put in a warm smokehouse for hours or days. So these are small issues, but they're cracks in the foundation of his authority on the subject. Do I recommend this book? Yes, I found it to be a fascinating read, and independent research has confirmed some of what I've been spurred on to read up on my own. But still, read this book with a grain of salt.

Amazing story. Who would think that salt could be so interesting. In our age of refrigeration and freezing, we have forgotten the importance of salt in daily life for hundreds of years.

Unlike oil, salt and water are reusable and also among the most abundant elements on earth. There is no shortage of either one to last humanity through eternity. Except without energy, we just can't make good use of them. This has been the struggle throughout human history until about 100 years ago. Mark Kurlansky's book, Salt: a World History, tells the world's history from the angle of salt and I will never view this commodity substance the same. Earth has a huge amount of salt. Coastal places clearly have sea water. Inland areas usually have salt mines, sometime as big as a mountain, or salt lakes. Then there are brine springs all around the world. To extract salt from them, we need energy: to dig, to evaporate, to distribute. Historical major saltworks were usually at the location where all three were together: free flowing brine spring, big mountain of rock salt, or long coast lines; forest, coal mine, natural gas, or good weather for solar energy; and river, canal, or sea ports. All those places became major cities which, in turn, shaped most of our history. Until canning and refrigeration, salting was the only way to preserve food: meat, fish, dairy, and vegetables. Therefore it became the element for survival. Without salt, people could not preserve food and would starve when there was no harvest or the weather turned bad. Salt also won or lost wars. Soldiers needed food to fight; food needed salt. No salt, no rations, no soldiers, no winning. Surprising number of wars were decided by the control of salt. For the US civil war, Union controlled salt better than Confederacy and eventually won. Many of my favorite foods: smoked salmon, ham, bacon, kimchi, thousand-year egg, etc. came from the old days when salting foods was an everyday business. I learned that Chinese prefer to cook with already salted ingredients: soy sauce, dou-ban, dou-shi, zai-cai, etc. instead of sprinkling salt directly. I also learned how salt makes meat tender by breaking down the protein. This explains the working of curing meat, also why brining chicken makes them tasty. With cheap energy, salt will be the easiest problem to solve. And the solution is right in front of us: nuclear. Almost all nuclear plants require cooling and what better to use than sea water? Cooling with sea water is the same as heating them up, salt just comes out of that process. I cannot say this book is a page turner and all those ancient recipes became boring at the end. It surprised me many times with fresh angles and factoids unknown to me. Salt shaped much of human histories and has been largely forgotten, just like many of those cities used to thrive with saltworks. Next time I go to ChengDu, I would have a different perspective for the city.

I would not describe myself as a history buff, but I do genuinely enjoy learning about the past, especially when it is explored through a tangible lens. I am particularly drawn to histories told through objects. By tracing the story of a single item and its evolution, you gain insight into how nature and culture shaped it, and in turn, how that object shaped societies, economies, and the environment. This approach feels more grounded and often less influenced by overt bias. Salt does exactly this. By examining the mining, distribution, and consumption of salt, the book reveals how something so ordinary has profoundly influenced human civilization and the natural world. The scope of its impact is surprising, and the narrative makes the subject both informative and compelling. It is a fascinating read that demonstrates how even the most everyday object can carry an extraordinary history.

Una interesante historia de cómo la sal determinó la riqueza d muchas naciones y lo necesaria que es para el día a día de nuestras vidas; que ya no valga tanto no significa que no sea importante. Muy interesante.