Old Salt

Last Christmas, my childhood friend Frances Brown White gave me a woven palm basket of foods she and her family had grown or gathered, including an organic vanilla bean, a jar of poha berry jam and a packet of fluffy white sea salt harvested on the Big Island of Hawaii. The handwritten label proclaims: Na Pa'a O'Kalae Mano-hand collected by us! The salt took me home again with the frothy taste of an ocean wave. It occupies our spice shelf alongside an Atlantic cousin, Le Tresor Fleur de Sel de Guérande, from Brittany, certified organic by France's Nature et Progrès, whose criteria include the purity of the water from which it evaporates and a requirement that the paludiers who gather the salt use only polyethylene (a least-toxic and recyclable plastic) and wooden rakes.

Organic or not, such "single origin" salts, identified with a specific place, are surging in popularity along with other heirloom foods celebrated by the international Slow Food movement. Different salts show their origins in their different colors: black, gray, ivory, red and pink. But despite manufacturers' claims that their products are rich in magnesium and other minerals, is artisanal salt healthier for us than the mass-produced industrial variety? "Not from a nutritional standpoint," says Marion Nestle, Ph.D., a professor of nutrition at New York University and author of What to Eat: An Aisle-by-Aisle Guide to Savvy Food Choices and Good Eating (North Point Press, 2006, $30). "And it's still going to have sodium," Nestle points out.

Then is it unhealthy to season with sea salt? "I don't think adding salt at the table is much of a problem in high blood pressure. What really increases salt intake is what's already there, in processed and restaurant foods," Nestle says. As we do need moderate salt intake to stay healthy, I'd rather eat fewer processed foods, which are also high in added sugar and fat, and sprinkle my fresh fish or vegetables with tasty sea salt.

Artisanal saltworks tend to be healthier for the environment, too, as industrial salt has a dirty "life cycle" in all kinds of ways. It is used to make chlorine, PVC plastic and soda ash, in oil drilling, and to de-ice roads, from where it can wash into storm drains, polluting waterways. A Mitsubishi industrial saltworks that would have disrupted a gray whale nursery in a pristine Baja California bay was defeated by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups in 2000. But a Cargill "modernized" saltworks using artificial ponds in a wildlife reserve in Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela, has put an estimated 2,000 artisanal salt workers out of work and harmed the local fishing industry by polluting the water (artificial ponds can spill over), according to Professor Jorge Hinestroza in the Faculty of Sciences at La Universidad del Zuli, Maracaibo, Venezuela. For a century, evaporator salt ponds ringed the inland reaches of the San Francisco Bay, destroying wetlands; the San Jose Mercury News reported that while public shoreline access and habitat were being restored, Cargill spilled thousands of gallons of toxic brine into the Bay in June 2005-its fourth spill since 2000.

In addition to being in far better taste all around, buying artisanal salt supports local businesses and a traditional way of life. See below for where to get it and learn more.

Le Tresor (about $9/lb.) and Le Paludier ($9/8 oz.) sea salts, certified by Nature et Progrès; New Zealand organic sea salt certified by Bio-Gro ($6.75/10.5 oz.); Halen Môn pure white sea salt from Wales and certified organic by The Soil Association ($11.50/9 oz.); Alaea Hawaiian sea salt (non-organic) ($8.95/lb.); and England's Maldon sea salt ($6.50/8.5 oz.) recommended by www.slate.com, all from www.saltworks.us.

Read about how salt used to be a rare and precious commodity that shaped the fate of nations, including our own. Remember the salt tax? Salt: A World History, by Mark Kurlansky (Penguin, 2003, $15), can be purchased at www.thegreenguide.com/books.