How much do you know about where your salt comes from? This infographic gives you a quick look at some of the biggest differences in the world of salt.
Click on image to enlarge.
Is Your Salt Real?
Not all Salt is created equal. To find out more about Real Salt® brand sea salt download our booklet here: Guide to Understanding Salt booklet.
If you are not able to find Real Salt in your area, please visit our online store or call us toll free at
800-367-7258 and we will happily ship any of our products directly to your door.
Real Salt Outside the United States
We don’t ship directly to international customers, but our products are available in many locations around the world.
- Canada: Real Salt on Well.ca
- New Zealand and Australia: Real Salt on HealthHouse.co.nz
Real Salt on EphraimHealth.co.nz - Europe: Real Salt on Holzbach
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If you’ve seen Real Salt on a store shelf lately, you may have noticed our new labels and packaging. Several of you have noticed and called or emailed to ask if the changed packaging means a changed product. It doesn’t. Real Salt didn’t change. The unit sizes didn’t change. The company hasn’t changed. Only the packaging changed.
What Changed?
A lot of customers told us our old logo was hard to read — from a distance it looked a lot like the product was called “BEAL SALT”. We’re all about REAL and not so interested in BEAL, so we wanted to simplify the logo. We also removed the “Redmond” from the logo, hoping to keep growing Real Salt as its own brand independent of our parent company, Redmond Inc.
We also updated our pouches and the labels on our shakers. The packaging is similar enough to be familiar to you, but we made them as transparent as we could to show off Real Salt’s unique appearance, and of course they’re sporting the new logo.
What Stayed the Same?
Real Salt is still harvested from an ancient sea bed here in the U.S.A. It’s still the same product, with the same unique flavor and health benefits you’ve come to expect from us. We’re still the same company– which is great because we all really love our jobs.
We know change can be a little unsettling and we love to hear from Real Salt customers, so if you have questions or comments about our new look we hope you’ll drop a note on Facebook or contact us by phone or email.
As our name implies, Real Salt is, well, real. When you eat Real Salt you know you’re getting salt exactly as nature made it–no minerals stripped out, nothing added, no gimmicks. We stick with what’s real, and you get a healthy, natural salt you can trust.
Sticking with what’s real is a great way to produce salt, and it’s also a great way to market salt. Our message is a lot like our product — simple, real, and easy to swallow. We know some people who use salt will never be Real Salt customers, and that’s just fine. We can only be who we are, so we don’t spend money marketing to people who don’t value the things we value.
It makes sense for us to keep our marketing messages as simple and real as our products are, but some salt companies have a tendency to complicate things with a little marketing trickery. For the most part they’re good companies producing good salt, but their marketing material can be a little misleading. We’re going to talk about it today, not because we want to point fingers, but because our customers sometimes ask and we like simple answers. Read More
Real Salt users like knowing that our product comes from an ancient sea bed, because we can all see the value of eating sea salt from a deposit left long before humans were around to pollute the water with chemicals and gushing oil. But every now and again, we hear from a customer wondering whether the Real Salt deposit was protected from a very different kind of pollution: radiation from nuclear tests in Nevada 60 years ago.
In the 1950’s, the United States government carried out a series of nuclear weapons tests in the Nevada desert. A generation of residents exposed to the fallout experienced serious health problems, so it makes sense to wonder how the tests may have affected natural resources in the West. We care about our health (and we put Real Salt on just about everything we eat) so we asked these same questions ourselves. Here’s what we learned. Read More
Most weekends we treat our kids to waffles using grandma’s old recipe. One Sunday, my visiting niece watched us mixing up the batter and asked, “Why is your flour dirty?” It took a second to realize that she wasn’t used to seeing our freshly-ground wheat flour, and compared to her family’s bleached white flour, ours definitely looked “dirty.” She wasn’t convinced, but we explained that even though real flour looks and tastes a little different from white flour, it’s actually better for us.
If you were to pay a visit to Real Salt’s customer service department, you wouldn’t have to wait long before someone calls with a similar question: Why is Real Salt dirty? Is there sand in Real Salt? Why doesn’t Real Salt dissolve completely like other salt? The short answer to all these questions is the same: This is what salt really looks like when nature makes salt. Read More
We’re going to do something today most companies don’t like to do: we’re going to say nice things about the competition.
No, that doesn’t mean we’re going to be kind to that bitter, chemically treated white table salt you still find in far too many kitchens, because if you understand the health benefits of Real Salt you already know that Real Salt and table salt aren’t even the same product. But we are going to answer a question we hear a lot when people are considering their salt options: What’s the difference between Real Salt and Celtic or Himalayan salt?
(Are you wondering why we’re only talking about Celtic and Himalayan? It’s because we are, first and foremost, salt lovers, and if for some reason Real Salt didn’t exist, Celtic and Himalayan are really the only other brands we’d consider using.)
Here’s a handy chart that will show you some of the differences at a glance.
Real Salt
Real Salt is an all natural unrefined sea salt harvested from an ancient ocean. It’s full of natural minerals that make it healthy, delicious, and pink or red looking, and though we do hate to boast we’re also the best-selling brand in America’s health food stores. Our salt deposit is in Redmond, Utah and since we own and control the whole process, we’re able to bring it to you in its unrefined, mineral-rich, delicious state.
Celtic Sea Salt
Celtic Salt is a great salt harvested from the current ocean. They do a terrific job with their salt, harvesting it by hand and leaving it unprocessed so it contains those important trace minerals. Compared to Real Salt, the biggest difference is that the current ocean is exposed to many anthropogenic environmental issues (mercury, lead, plastic & petroleum toxins, chemicals, etc.) that ancient seas didn’t experience. (That’s not to say Celtic users have anything to worry about, but we like the idea of salt that comes from a pristine ancient sea.)
Himalayan Pink
Like Real Salt, the Himalayan brands are harvested from an ancient salt deposit that would have been created long before there were any modern toxins. Geologically, the Himalayan deposit is very similar to Real Salt; they both have the full spectrum of minerals and both can be considered crystal salts. Tasted side by side, Real Salt is a bit sweeter, while Himalayan tends toward an earthy flavor.
The big difference between Real Salt and Himalayan is geography. Real Salt comes from the USA (Redmond, Utah), and the Himalayan deposits are in and around Khewra, Pakistan. There are a number of different mines supplying the Himalayan brands, and some have more modern standards than others. Himalayan salt has to travel more than 7,000 miles just to make it to America, with all the environmental impacts that come with that. Real Salt not only has to travel a shorter distance, but our operations in Redmond our powered by our two large solar fields, reducing our environmental impact even more.
Generally, Real Salt is half the cost (we’re so glad we don’t have to ship it from Pakistan!) and we know you can always trust the quality, processes, and labor policies that bring Real Salt to your kitchen.
Salt source map
Use this map to get an idea where three of the top unrefined sea salts come from.
Still not sure which salt is right for you? If you’re closer to Pakistan than you are to Utah, we think a Himalayan salt could be your best choice. And you can always take the Real Salt taste test: try Real Salt, then try whatever salt you used to use. The difference will amaze you!
It’s been decades since we started hearing about salt’s damaging effects on our bodies, and it seems salt is only getting less popular as time goes by. Recently, state senators in New York flirted with legislation that would even make it illegal for restaurants to salt their food, treating salt as if it were on par with second-hand cigarette smoke.
Is salt so bad that we need laws to protect us from its effects? Well, you’re reading this on the website of a salt company, so you can probably guess what we think. But being predictable doesn’t mean we’re on the wrong track, so if you have a few minutes, let’s examine the salt myth in context and see what all the fuss is about.
Salt is essential for life
Let’s take a big step away from the salt debate and look at things from a distance. If you are admitted to any modern hospital in the world, chances are very good that one of the first people you meet will be very interested in finding the biggest vein in your arm so they can stick you with a needle and introduce saline solution (salt water) directly into your body. Since hospital workers are generally in the life-preserving and health-improving business, it’s probably safe to assume that salt, itself, is not something we need to keep out of our bodies.
I know, there’s a difference between eating salt and getting an IV, and you’re still wondering whether you can trust a salt company when we tell you salt is good for you. I guess it’s a good time to break out the sources. A 2006 study published in The American Journal of Medicine tells us that “sodium intake of less than 2300 mg (the daily recommended allowance) was associated with a 37% increase in cardiovascular disease mortality and a 28% increase of all-cause mortality.” Mortality is a rather polite word for dying, so in other words, people who consume too little salt are more likely to die than other people. Other peer-reviewed journals have released similar results in 2000, 2004, 2006, and even 1960, and several authors and health experts complain loudly when they hear people dismissing salt. (Scroll down to the bottom for links directly to the reports.)
So why does salt have such a bad reputation? Well, to go back to our hypothetical hospital visit, you can be sure your nurse isn’t simply dumping bleached table salt into the drinking fountain water to prepare those IV bags — hospitals and health care professionals understand that all salt isn’t the same.
All salt is not created equal
Did you know that all salt could technically be considered “sea salt”? Some salt is harvested from current oceans, some from dead seas, and some is mined from ancient sea beds, but the sea is (or was) ultimately the source of all salt. Sea water usually contains more than 60 essential trace minerals, but most salt producers today remove these high-profit minerals and sell them to vitamin manufacturers before selling the remaining salt to you and me to dump on our hash browns.
That would be okay, but when you remove the trace minerals that used to accompany sodium chloride, you typically get a bitter flavor that many producers try to mask with chemicals or even sugar. (Go ahead — grab your salt shaker and read the ingredients. See any dextrose? Yep, that’s sugar!) Even worse, when you consume chemically treated or de-mineralized salt, your body’s mineral balance doesn’t always respond gracefully. When people started consuming chemically altered salts 100 years ago, we started seeing high blood pressure and water retention that had never been associated with salt before. Interestingly enough, our customers tell us these are the same problems that go away when natural salt replaces “table salt” in their diet.
In other words, salt can be bad for your health, but real salt is actually a crucial part of good health! That’s why, more than 50 years ago, we named our brand Real Salt: Your body knows the difference between what is real and what has been chemically altered. Real Salt is salt exactly the way nature made it. You can taste the difference on your tongue, and you can feel a difference in your health.
References
Absolutely! In addition to its unique protection from pollutants in today’s oceans, Real Salt won Best of Show in a professional taste test of top gourmet natural salts. But you don’t have to take our word for it — experience the Real Salt® difference yourself!
Take the Real Salt taste test…First taste Real Salt, then try any other salt. The difference will amaze you!
