Speaker 1: The so called liquomen is made. In this manner, the
Speaker 1: intestines of fish are thrown into a vessel and salted.
Speaker 1: Small fish, either the best smelt or small mullet or
Speaker 1: sprats or wolffish, or whatever is deemed to be small,
Speaker 1: are all salted together and shaken frequently, and are fermented
Speaker 1: in the sun. After it has been reduced in the heat,
Speaker 1: garam is obtained from it. In this way, a large,
Speaker 1: strong basket is placed into the vessel of the aforementioned fish,
Speaker 1: and the garum streams into the basket. In this way,
Speaker 1: the so called liquimen is strained through the basket. When
Speaker 1: it is shaken up, the remaining refuse is alec Next,
Speaker 1: if you wish to use the garum immediately, that is
Speaker 1: to say, not fermented in the sun, but to boil it,
Speaker 1: you do it this way when the brine has been
Speaker 1: tested so that an egg having been thrown in floats
Speaker 1: if it sinks it is not sufficiently salty, and throwing
Speaker 1: the fish into the brine in a newly made earthen
Speaker 1: way pot and adding in some oregano, you place it
Speaker 1: on a sufficient fire until it is boiled, that is,
Speaker 1: until it begins to reduce a little, some throw and
Speaker 1: boiled down must unfermented wine. Next throwing the cooled liquid
Speaker 1: into a filter. You toss it a second and a
Speaker 1: third time through the filter until it turns out clear.
Speaker 1: After having covered it, store it away.
Speaker 2: So did you like that? What is happening at home?
Speaker 1: Instructions to make this fishy salty, fishy sauce called garum
Speaker 1: that's like was very popular in ancient Rome. That recipe
Speaker 1: comes from I mean, the original recipes are probably hundreds
Speaker 1: of years earlier, but that one comes from nine hundred
Speaker 1: CE from a Greek agricultural manual.
Speaker 2: I have so many questions, like what what why?
Speaker 1: I mean, who doesn't love a little salty sauce on there?
Speaker 2: A little sauce. So it's the sauce, so you're not
Speaker 2: going to eat the fish. It's like the sauce part
Speaker 2: that you're keeping. I mean it's it's also like made
Speaker 2: from fishy, fishy. You're salting the fish, but it's this,
Speaker 2: it's the filter. It's the filterrait that you're keeping.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I imagine it it tastes fishy, fishy, yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like.
Speaker 2: Fish sauce.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what it tastes like.
Speaker 2: But I I mean, should we try it? I would
Speaker 2: love to. I love fish sauce, so me too could
Speaker 2: be good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is going to be a couple of weird episodes.
Speaker 2: I'm really excited about it.
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh and I'm Aaron aman Updyke and
Speaker 1: this is this podcast will kill you.
Speaker 2: It's getting weird. But we're talking about Salt. Salt, Salt.
Speaker 2: This all starts two episodes. Honestly, though, like I think
Speaker 2: it ended up it started. We've been through a roller
Speaker 2: coaster of feelings about Salt throughout the process. The making
Speaker 2: of it started because I was like, I bought the
Speaker 2: book Salt. I found it at a thrift store and
Speaker 2: I was like, I've been wanting to read this book
Speaker 2: for a while.
Speaker 1: And I was like, I basically strong armed you into
Speaker 1: doing two episodes on Salt.
Speaker 2: It's accurate.
Speaker 1: And then I was like I don't want to do
Speaker 1: this anymore, and you were like, no, I found a
Speaker 1: good story, Let's do this. And I was like okay,
Speaker 1: and then I was like, oh cool, Actually Salt is
Speaker 1: really interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Really, we went back and forth several times, had
Speaker 2: some regrets, came through it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we'll have no regrets at the end
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: No, I'm already like really stoked for today. I am too.
Speaker 1: I am too. We do have some business to get
Speaker 1: out of the way first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, should we like warn people what these two episodes
Speaker 2: are going to be about. Oh, yeah, that's probably a
Speaker 2: good idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the first episode, so today, what I'm going to
Speaker 1: be talking about is kind of the historical aspects of salt,
Speaker 1: like why when did we start using it as much
Speaker 1: as we did? And some just like honestly, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be well equipped to hit up the next Trivia night
Speaker 1: if there are any questions about salt.
Speaker 2: I love that. I'm really I hope there's a whole
Speaker 2: salt based section in your next Trivia Day.
Speaker 1: That wouldn't that be If there is, please let us know.
Speaker 2: That would be so great.
Speaker 1: And then you next episode, Aaron, tell them what you're
Speaker 1: going to be talking about.
Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about salt and our health. There
Speaker 2: you go, broadly, very very broadly speaking.
Speaker 1: I'm excited for this because I feel like there is
Speaker 1: so much noise.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, but you're right, we have some business first.
Speaker 1: Quarantiny times, Quarantiny time I love how it's turned from
Speaker 1: like a fun thing that we do to business.
Speaker 2: It is business, the business portion of it.
Speaker 1: We're drinking grains of salt.
Speaker 2: Grains of salt because there's a lot.
Speaker 1: Of the history of salt that you should take with
Speaker 1: a grain of salt, and there's definitely aspects of the
Speaker 1: current salt debate today you should take some grains of
Speaker 1: salt with yeah.
Speaker 2: Or maybe not a or not. And the grains of
Speaker 2: salt is based on.
Speaker 1: A cocktail that you know has been established for a
Speaker 1: while that has salt in the name.
Speaker 2: It's called the Salty Dog. The Salty Dog, which we
Speaker 2: also done this before. Maybe it's fine, it's fine, we're
Speaker 2: calling it something new.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like after one hundred something episodes we
Speaker 1: are allowed to repeat if we Yeah, if we try
Speaker 1: our hardest not to.
Speaker 2: Do whatever we want.
Speaker 1: It's grapefruit juice and either vodka or gin, whatever your pick,
Speaker 1: and the assaulted rim. Yeah, it's pretty simple.
Speaker 2: Pretty simple, pretty dilish. Yeah, we'll post the full recipe
Speaker 2: on our website. This podcast will kill you. Nope, we
Speaker 2: don't do that anymore.
Speaker 1: We're gonna try though Aaron List site.
Speaker 2: This podcast with Killara dot com and all of our
Speaker 2: social media is where you will definitely see it there, yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Also on our website you can find all sorts of things,
Speaker 1: from transcripts to links to our bookshop dot org affiliate page,
Speaker 1: our Goodreads lists. You can find links to merch You
Speaker 1: can find oh man who does a link to a
Speaker 1: first hand account, form contact us form stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Everything? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 1: Anything else? Or can we just get started?
Speaker 2: Tell me about salt erin I can't wait too.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's take a quick break and then I'll get
Speaker 1: right to it. Aaron, I love salt.
Speaker 2: I know you did.
Speaker 1: Like you've seen me eat French fries like I'm salting
Speaker 1: and already very salty food. It's not good or is it?
Speaker 2: Or I guess we'll find out more next week.
Speaker 1: No, I think it's I think it's not good. I
Speaker 1: think it's bad. But despite knowing this, despite knowing that
Speaker 1: it's probably not great, that I'm salting things and eating
Speaker 1: a lot of salt, I want more of it. I
Speaker 1: feel like I need salt. I crave salt, and it
Speaker 1: might occasionally be the case that I do actually need
Speaker 1: to replenish some salt, Like maybe I'm do a long
Speaker 1: run in the heat, or I'm working outside all day
Speaker 1: and I'm sweating out lots of salt. But in general,
Speaker 1: nowadays we eat a whole lot more salt than we
Speaker 1: need to like make up for, right, Like we're able
Speaker 1: to make up the salt that we lose pretty easily. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But what does enough salt mean? Like, what does it
Speaker 1: mean in a biological sense? I mean, and I'm not
Speaker 1: going to answer that question, but the answer does vary
Speaker 1: from person to person, I think in general, and there
Speaker 1: are guidelines that also help to determine what enough is.
Speaker 1: These guidelines have, of course, undergone some shifts in the
Speaker 1: past few decades. In his book Salt, a World History,
Speaker 1: author Mark Kurlanski writes that the average human contains about
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty grams of salt, So that.
Speaker 2: Statistic, right, which is enough to fill?
Speaker 1: Just to visualize this, a couple a few standard sized salt.
Speaker 2: Shakers, yeah, yeah, like the little ones you have on
Speaker 2: your dinner table salty.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Whenever we lose salt, which we're constantly doing through bodily
Speaker 1: functions like sweating or peeing, we need to consume more
Speaker 1: to replenish what we've lost. If we don't, in extreme cases,
Speaker 1: we do run the risk of our bodies shutting down. Basically,
Speaker 1: salt is essential for life, and when I say salt,
Speaker 1: I am referring to the dietary salt that we think of,
Speaker 1: mostly sodium chloride, the stuff that we consume, not salt
Speaker 1: is in like the broad chemical term for when an
Speaker 1: acid combines with a base.
Speaker 2: I have like the same disclaimer episode too.
Speaker 1: Like just I know someone's gonna be like, excuse me,
Speaker 1: salt is actually quite a broad term. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: but I'm talking about salt, like talking about sodium sodium. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also don't know how you would approach a history
Speaker 1: of like salt in the broad chemical sense.
Speaker 2: I don't know. You learned about ions and.
Speaker 1: I guess sure, I mean, but to be honest, like,
Speaker 1: I'm also still grappling with how you approach a history
Speaker 1: of table salt like sodium chloride. Salt because it has
Speaker 1: had and it continues to have, such a profound influence
Speaker 1: throughout so much of our species, evolutionary and written history.
Speaker 1: Salt has held symbolic and religious significance. It has shaped
Speaker 1: human settlement, It has led to revolutions, It has been
Speaker 1: used as a commodity, a currency, and as a medicine.
Speaker 1: Salt has held the key to some nation's prosperity and
Speaker 1: the downfall of others. It's some pretty powerful stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sounds like it, right.
Speaker 1: But now, when you can saunter into any grocery store
Speaker 1: and pick up a jar of the stuff for pennies,
Speaker 1: you might not be awestruck by the wonder of salt.
Speaker 1: In fact, you might instead be shopping for low sodium alternatives.
Speaker 1: How can I get less of this stuff?
Speaker 2: How can I avoid this? Right?
Speaker 1: But that would blow the minds of time travelers from
Speaker 1: almost any other point in history prior to the twentieth century. Really,
Speaker 1: what do you mean you don't want salt in your food?
Speaker 1: What do you mean salt is so cheap? These days,
Speaker 1: we don't think twice about whether or not we'll have
Speaker 1: access to salt. If anything, our primary concern when it
Speaker 1: comes to salt is how to eat less of it
Speaker 1: for our health. That wasn't the case for most of
Speaker 1: human history. One of the things that I love about
Speaker 1: microhistories is how they always make the case for like
Speaker 1: this thing, this subject, this invention, this incident, this one
Speaker 1: point in history holds the key to everything. It explains everything.
Speaker 1: But with salt, though, I'm like kind of convinced you
Speaker 1: buy it. I'm buying it. I'm buying it. All animals
Speaker 1: need salt. How much they need and where they get
Speaker 1: it from depends on the species.
Speaker 2: Or the individual.
Speaker 1: And next week, Arin, you'll do this the honor of
Speaker 1: talking about how much we humans need, maybe, which, as
Speaker 1: we'll see, is a very contentious issue, much more so
Speaker 1: than I realized. But for now, I want to tell
Speaker 1: you where humans got salt and what we did with it,
Speaker 1: what we used to do with it. Salt occurs naturally
Speaker 1: in all sorts of forms, right. It's in salt water
Speaker 1: the ocean and seas, in salt springs, in salt deposits underground,
Speaker 1: like rock salt in the crusts of dried salty lakes.
Speaker 1: We can consume or harvest salt directly from these sources,
Speaker 1: and we can also get salt from eating the things
Speaker 1: that also take in salt, like, for instance, animals. Right, So,
Speaker 1: early humans got a good proportion of their salt from
Speaker 1: the wild game that they killed, including both like eating
Speaker 1: consuming the meat of animals and their blood like drinking
Speaker 1: the blood or using the blood to make other dishes exactly, yeah,
Speaker 1: or we got salt from fish or other marine life
Speaker 1: for those that were living closer to the coasts. But
Speaker 1: as humans started to settle in larger groups and develop agriculture,
Speaker 1: diet shifted to include proportionally more grains and vegetables, which
Speaker 1: are generally speaking, much lower in salt than animal products. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: domesticated livestock like sheep, pigs, and cattle fall close behind
Speaker 1: the development of agriculture, making them a handy, close by
Speaker 1: source of salt. One paper I read suggested that livestock
Speaker 1: domestication was actually helped along because the wild ancestors of
Speaker 1: these animals were drawn to human settlements by the salt
Speaker 1: content of human urine. They would be attracted to human settlements.
Speaker 2: Interesting, right, So then it made it easier to domesticate
Speaker 2: them because they're like coming over anywhere anyway.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're getting used to humans, you know, like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't know, and I don't know how
Speaker 1: you would like actually measure that in any capacity, but yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's a fun idea, yeah, and so and also
Speaker 1: I think it's like which animals would be drawn to that,
Speaker 1: So I mentioned earlier. How some animals need more salt
Speaker 1: than others, or they vary in how they get it.
Speaker 1: The general rule that I saw mentioned was that carnivores
Speaker 1: tend to get their salt from their prey because the
Speaker 1: bodies of animals contain lot more salt than like grasses
Speaker 1: and veggies and whatnot, and so herbivores will often supplement
Speaker 1: with naturally occurring sources of salt, like salt licks. Here's
Speaker 1: my big reveal. So I have the sweatshirt on.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, stop, did you have like something covering it?
Speaker 1: It's a little post it that's ramen. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: instant ramen post it.
Speaker 2: That's so good on so many levels. Oh wait where
Speaker 2: their sweatshirts from?
Speaker 1: So my sweatshirt is a place that I have taken
Speaker 1: you erin.
Speaker 2: It is called.
Speaker 1: Big Bone Lick State Historic Site. We call it Big
Speaker 1: Bone Lick State Park. Growing up Bone Baby Big Bone Lick.
Speaker 1: So this is in northern Kentucky. Yes, that is the
Speaker 1: actual name of it. Yes, I am wrapping a sweatshirt
Speaker 1: that also has a wooly mammoth on it.
Speaker 2: I wish you could see it better. Your mic isn't
Speaker 2: exactly the wrong spot.
Speaker 1: Can you see it now?
Speaker 2: There? It is chuck it out.
Speaker 1: It's red, it is red, and it's It's called Big
Speaker 1: Bone Leake State Park because there are old salt licks
Speaker 1: that prehistoric megafauna used to come to for salt. There
Speaker 1: are so many lots of fossils of things like mammoth,
Speaker 1: ground sloths, et cetera there, and it's known. I'm like,
Speaker 1: it's so thrilling to talk about Big.
Speaker 2: Bone State Park.
Speaker 1: It's known as the birthplace of American vertebrate paleontology because
Speaker 1: of all of these fossils.
Speaker 2: That have been found there.
Speaker 1: And it's funny too, a lot of the fossils that
Speaker 1: were found are actually reside in other countries because it
Speaker 1: was like in the seventeen hundreds and so and so
Speaker 1: they're all just being shipped out to other places eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: But also it's I just have to mention it is
Speaker 1: in fairly close proximity to the Creation Museum, which I
Speaker 1: just find particularly a little you know, rich irony.
Speaker 2: A little on the nose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. But also at Big Bone Lick State
Speaker 1: Park State Historic Site, there is an annual salt festival
Speaker 1: that is held there. I've only been once but I
Speaker 1: remember some of the salt making demonstrations. It's really cool.
Speaker 1: It happens around mid October if I remember correctly, So
Speaker 1: if you're in the area next year, you should definitely
Speaker 1: check it out. Anyway, that's my little plug for State Park. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's a put putt, the free put putt course. We
Speaker 1: go there all the time. Anyway, back to salt licks
Speaker 1: and animals and domestication, you can also see this happening now.
Speaker 1: So for instance, if you here in Colorado, if you
Speaker 1: drive up to Mount Blue Sky, often the goats will
Speaker 1: come and to your cars and lick the salt off
Speaker 1: of your cars.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's not like these these mountain goats are
Speaker 1: on their way to domestication, just that animals are drawn
Speaker 1: to salt, as are humans. Many early human settlements were
Speaker 1: situated close to sources of salt, you know, salty springs,
Speaker 1: salty lakes, underground deposits of rock salt. Archaeological evidence has
Speaker 1: actually been found at Big Bone Lick of early human habitation.
Speaker 1: Some sources provided a steady supply of salt year round,
Speaker 1: while others were more subject to the whims of like
Speaker 1: climate and environment. You can see this with like rising
Speaker 1: sea levels or falling sea levels like it changes the
Speaker 1: access to salt. Salt, and so having access to a
Speaker 1: steady source became the primary motivator for salt extraction or
Speaker 1: mining or refining technologies which date back thousands of years
Speaker 1: to at least around three thousand BCE. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is in ancient China mostly, And those cities or towns
Speaker 1: or settlements that over centuries had the salt and the
Speaker 1: technology to produce it, they were the ones that grew
Speaker 1: that often grew wealthy and powerful as they controlled this
Speaker 1: valuable commodity. Why did we want so much salt? Like,
Speaker 1: did we need it?
Speaker 2: Why was it? Why was it such a valuable commodity? Why? Right?
Speaker 1: Right, Well, we didn't need it in a physiological sense,
Speaker 1: right at least as far as I could tell, we
Speaker 1: needed it because salt has an incredible superpower. It can
Speaker 1: freeze time at the basic level. Salt balances fluids, It
Speaker 1: shifts the amount of water from here to there. And
Speaker 1: if you overload something like say a fish, with salt,
Speaker 1: that will suck the moisture out of the cells and
Speaker 1: prevent the growth of microbe since they can't survive in
Speaker 1: that super salty environment, and so salt is one of
Speaker 1: our earliest preservatives. Why is this a superpower? Okay, So pretend,
Speaker 1: if you will, that you live five thousand years ago
Speaker 1: and you make your living catching and selling fish. So
Speaker 1: you go out, you cast your nets, you set your lines,
Speaker 1: whatever it is however you're catching fish, and then you
Speaker 1: boat back to shore to peddle your wares. This is
Speaker 1: pre refrigeration, pre ice. Your window for selling that fish
Speaker 1: is incredibly small, as is your potential customer base. So
Speaker 1: if you happen to be selling out a day when
Speaker 1: everyone's got loads of fish, and you're like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: why would I buy yours over theirs? I can't eat
Speaker 1: this much fish, you probably have to drop your prices
Speaker 1: to be competitive. If you're able to sell at all,
Speaker 1: and if you don't sell anything that day, that means
Speaker 1: that your labor has been lost and you have to
Speaker 1: go out the next day and try again. Your income,
Speaker 1: your livelihood, it depends on the whims of the local market.
Speaker 1: It's a tenuous life to live. But if you could
Speaker 1: freeze time, at least for the fish by adding some
Speaker 1: salt and slowing its decay, you become a whole lot
Speaker 1: less to high to the day to day shifts in
Speaker 1: the market. In fact, you're not tied to your local
Speaker 1: market at all. You could bring your salted fish on
Speaker 1: long journeys along trade routes, and your fish now has
Speaker 1: more value overall since it's loaded with this tasty and
Speaker 1: precious substance. Nor are you tied to the seasonality of
Speaker 1: some foods. So during those times of scarcity, like over winter,
Speaker 1: when catch is low and you've eaten through all the
Speaker 1: food that you've stored for those long months, now you
Speaker 1: have these frozen in time salted fish getting you and
Speaker 1: your family through. It's amazing.
Speaker 2: It's pretty incredible. I mean, okay, so I have can
Speaker 2: I ask you a question? Of course? So, but this
Speaker 2: is like thousands and thousands of years ago, three thousand CE.
Speaker 1: You said, three thousand BCE BC see the future, Yeah.
Speaker 2: The future. What before people figured out salt? First of all,
Speaker 2: how did they figure it out?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: How did how did they figure that out? And also
Speaker 2: before that was there any like was it just you
Speaker 2: could smoke things? Is that is that all they had?
Speaker 2: Or yeah, actually that's a good question.
Speaker 1: I don't know when smoking, like the relative timing of
Speaker 1: smoking versus salting but also, I mean smoking takes fuel
Speaker 1: right as well. Yeah, the extraction of salts also can
Speaker 1: take a lot of fuel. Okay, but yeah, what was
Speaker 1: your other question? So I don't know about salting versus smoking.
Speaker 1: You can't discover salts. Yeah, I mean I don't know
Speaker 1: except for the fact that salt tastes good, right, So
Speaker 1: I would imagine it was sort of that, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: aspect of it. Like there, do I have this quote here? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a quote from ancient each from an old papyrus
Speaker 1: that reads, there is no better food than salted vegetables.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: I'm inclined to agree to agree with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how interesting, Aaron. It's so weird to think about,
Speaker 2: Like someone figured out, Hey, if I like boil this water,
Speaker 2: what's leftover is this stuff and it tastes really good. Oh,
Speaker 2: by the way, also it makes my fish last longer,
Speaker 2: by the way, Now I've revolutionized the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, I know. And it was a trans truly
Speaker 1: transformative idea, especially in regions where climatic shifts shortened the
Speaker 1: growing or harvesting or hunting or fishing seasons. Right, So
Speaker 1: I used fish as an example, and fish would become
Speaker 1: like the hugest commodity after the fourteenth century, with like
Speaker 1: salted herring and then later cod. But salt was fundamental
Speaker 1: to the production of so many other foods, some of
Speaker 1: which had been salted for centuries. Pickling like sauerkraut and
Speaker 1: other veg cheese, the salted fish sauce than mancient Rome
Speaker 1: called garum misopei soy sauce. Cheese, butter our dairy products
Speaker 1: used to contain a lot more salt. So there was
Speaker 1: a recipe from the fourteenth century for butter that called
Speaker 1: for one pound of salt for every ten pounds of butter.
Speaker 2: Whoa, that's salty butter.
Speaker 1: I know, I would have loved it.
Speaker 2: It would be so good spread on some toast and sour.
Speaker 1: Out perfection, bacon, ham, olives. I mean, there are so
Speaker 1: many things that salt has been added to that helps
Speaker 1: prolong it shelf life.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Salami comes from the word for salted, as does salad.
Speaker 2: Salad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's like, yeah salted, that's hilarious. So
Speaker 1: it's like so many things, yeah, salt, food, food and salts.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Wow, it's easy to love salt.
Speaker 1: I think this shows how easy it is to love salt.
Speaker 1: The number of things that it was added to, and
Speaker 1: not just for taste, but also for practical purposes, for
Speaker 1: longevity of the foods. And this utility and love of
Speaker 1: salt created a tremendous commercial opportunity. Cities that were close
Speaker 1: to sources of salt, or those that produced lots of
Speaker 1: salted foods grew wealthy on the trade that they conducted,
Speaker 1: and as a result, global trade overall grew enormously. Salt
Speaker 1: was used for a whole lot more than just salt
Speaker 1: curing or even just like adding some seasoning to your meal.
Speaker 1: It was used to cure leather, clean chimneys, to solder pipes,
Speaker 1: glaze pottery, and as a medicine for all sorts of ailments.
Speaker 1: But it was really by reducing seasonal dependence on foods
Speaker 1: that salt made its mark on human civilizations. I don't
Speaker 1: call it a superpower. Lightly like salt was also held
Speaker 1: in great importance by many cultures. I think because of
Speaker 1: the power that it held, it represented purity, incorruptibility, immortality, loyalty, durability,
Speaker 1: hospitality like you better make sure that you have a
Speaker 1: salt cellar on the table when you have guests over
Speaker 1: Some of these salt sellers too, like historically are just
Speaker 1: so intricate and beautiful. The Romans actually held salt in
Speaker 1: such importance that they salt had to be on the
Speaker 1: table before any other dish was placed there.
Speaker 2: Ah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's used in many different religions, offerings, and rituals. It
Speaker 1: was linked to arousal and passion and creativity. It was
Speaker 1: thought to be important for fertility. It was the essence
Speaker 1: of life. So think of the phrase salt of the earth.
Speaker 1: According to the that's what Jesus said to his disciples.
Speaker 1: You are the salt of the earth, the best of
Speaker 1: the human race.
Speaker 2: Right, pretty big deal, salts of the earth.
Speaker 1: It was used to protect from harm. You know, Sprinkle
Speaker 1: a newborn baby with salt is what you're supposed to do.
Speaker 1: Sprinkle your herd of cows, carry a little bag of
Speaker 1: salt around your neck to ward off evil. Or if
Speaker 1: you've watched the show Supernatural, there's always a bag of salt.
Speaker 2: Saltar demons, yep, protect against demons, make your witches circles.
Speaker 1: And so to spill salt was considered a bad omen.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you're supposed to like throw a
Speaker 1: little bit of salt.
Speaker 2: Over your left shoulder.
Speaker 1: That would that was like, that's the least extreme response
Speaker 1: to a little bit of spilled salt. There are some
Speaker 1: places where it was like, no, then you do that,
Speaker 1: and you have to crawl under the table and then
Speaker 1: do that again, Like it's like this whole step mm hmm. Interesting,
Speaker 1: And that, like spilling salt being bad luck, goes back century.
Speaker 1: In da Vinci's Last Supper, there's a bit of spilt
Speaker 1: salt in front of judas a scariot, indicating that like
Speaker 1: this isn't that wild?
Speaker 2: I saw that salt. Salt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, spilling salt could signify the end of a friendship,
Speaker 1: or at least a quarrel. Oh, friendship was forged in salt.
Speaker 1: Homer called it a divine substance. Plato said that it
Speaker 1: was quote especially dear to the gods. Plutarch wrote that
Speaker 1: without salt, practically nothing is eatable. Salt is added even
Speaker 1: to bread and enriches its flavor. Beyond that, salty food
Speaker 1: aids digestion, and it makes any food tender.
Speaker 2: And how interesting Aaron. I know, I'm thinking about all
Speaker 2: of this in the context of what I'm going to
Speaker 2: talk about next week, and it just makes it so interesting.
Speaker 1: It's quite the rebranding of salt what we've experienced, and
Speaker 1: especially the last fifty years or so.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, right, right, right right.
Speaker 1: I mean a Pliny went so far as to say
Speaker 1: that quote A civilized life is impossible without salt.
Speaker 2: And civilized life life is impossible impossible without salt.
Speaker 1: Is it any wonder then, that those who held the
Speaker 1: salt held the power. Salt itself was not necessarily rare, right,
Speaker 1: it was never held as more important or equally valuable
Speaker 1: as gold, for example. That's sort of like a I
Speaker 1: don't know what you call an urban legend. That's like
Speaker 1: a historical urban legend, myth maybe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's and I don't know, I think might be right.
Speaker 2: I have heard that, so I know what you mean
Speaker 2: by that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was just that it wasn't evenly distributed across a region,
Speaker 1: and it required labor to extract and to move, and
Speaker 1: so you had to like spend some It wasn't hard
Speaker 1: to get. It was just it wasn't hard to get
Speaker 1: in the sense that it was rare. It was hard
Speaker 1: to get in the sense that it required labor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so those who were positioned to transport or produce
Speaker 1: salt benefited enormously from the taxes enforced on moving huge
Speaker 1: amounts of the stuff or of salted foods. So in
Speaker 1: ancient Rome, some of the first great roads were built
Speaker 1: for salt transportation purposes. Via Solaria is one of these.
Speaker 1: It means salt road salaria. Ancient Rome also had a
Speaker 1: treasury position whose job it was to make decisions about
Speaker 1: salt prices. Salt occasionally seems to have been used as currency,
Speaker 1: although not as much as is often suggested. It's another myth.
Speaker 1: And while the often repeated bit of trivia that Roman
Speaker 1: soldiers were paid in salt is not true.
Speaker 2: They were not paid in salt. They were paid in money.
Speaker 1: The word salary does come from this period, meaning someone
Speaker 1: paid an allowance to buy salt. So like if you
Speaker 1: were paid a salary, it was like, here's your allowance
Speaker 1: to buy salt.
Speaker 2: Like that is sort of where that comes. We're not
Speaker 2: paying you in salt, but we're paying you so you
Speaker 2: can go buy your salt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, Yeah, get your own salt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, get your own salt.
Speaker 1: You know that phrase, not worth his salt, meaning someone
Speaker 1: is not worth what you're paying them.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's so interesting, Aaron, Yeah, yeah, I mean there
Speaker 2: are salts.
Speaker 1: There are So this is what I'm saying, Like, you
Speaker 1: are equipped now for trivia. You You're welcome more salt sayings,
Speaker 1: or at least one more take it with a grain
Speaker 1: of salt, you know, meaning with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Speaker 1: That seems to have originated from a recipe for an
Speaker 1: antidote by planning the elder who he listed a bunch
Speaker 1: of things like Okay, so you're grinding together walnuts and
Speaker 1: figs and rue add a grain of salt, and that
Speaker 1: was thought to maybe like a digestion, and so over
Speaker 1: time that kind of evolved into its current use.
Speaker 2: People think maybe it's to like.
Speaker 1: A digestion of difficult ideas interesting.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's I feel like some of
Speaker 1: the salt lore is kind of like whatever you want
Speaker 1: it to be, right, and so that's what I want
Speaker 1: it to be.
Speaker 2: But I like that because I feel like otherwise, when
Speaker 2: you think about it, you're like, why does this phrase
Speaker 2: not seem to fit with the rest of the salt
Speaker 2: phrases right to the grain of the yeah aah yeah,
Speaker 2: because it's like, oh, I'm not I don't really believe that,
Speaker 2: so like take it with a grain of salt. So
Speaker 2: it's like, if it's more to age your digestion, di
Speaker 2: of this difficult idea, Yeah, let's go with it.
Speaker 1: We'll go with it. Rubbing salt in the wound, for instance.
Speaker 1: That goes back to the days when salt was sometimes
Speaker 1: used as a not very effective and extremely painful antiseptic.
Speaker 2: So it would be like, apply some salt to that wound. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Back to the salt mines, meaning having to return
Speaker 1: to grueling or unpleasant work. That phrase originated in the
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds in Russia, when prisoners were
Speaker 1: often sent to Siberia to work in the salt mines.
Speaker 1: But I mean salt mines were intense places. So here's
Speaker 1: a quote from fifteen fifty five about salt mines in Poland. Quote,
Speaker 1: there are mountains in which the salt goes down very deep.
Speaker 1: Here on the fifth of January fifteen twenty eight, I
Speaker 1: climbed down fifty ladders in order to see for myself,
Speaker 1: and there in the depths observed workers naked because of
Speaker 1: the heat, using iron tools to dig out a most
Speaker 1: valuable horde of salt from these inexhaustible mines as if
Speaker 1: it had been gold and silver end quote. Yeah, down
Speaker 1: there you're so high or naked, yeah, and you're having
Speaker 1: to chip away salt like brutal. Yeah. So these were
Speaker 1: deeply unpleasant places to work, I would imagine, and often,
Speaker 1: you know, the ones who were working there were prisoners
Speaker 1: or enslaved. People were forced to work there as punishment. Okay,
Speaker 1: So generally speaking, there are two main sources of salt
Speaker 1: for easy extraction, salt that's been dissolved in water like
Speaker 1: seawater or salty springs, and then there's rock salt, which
Speaker 1: exists kind of like from that quote and deposits underground.
Speaker 1: You can get rock salt out of the earth by mining,
Speaker 1: and you can get salt out of water by either
Speaker 1: boiling off the water leaving salt crystals behind, which used
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of fuel. Forests had been devastated in
Speaker 1: this process. Imagine like you can't you know, just to.
Speaker 2: Get fuel to burn for to make salt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean. And also it wasn't like the getting
Speaker 1: salt was the only reason for devastation of forests, but
Speaker 1: like it helps be contributed yeah, yeah, or there's evaporation,
Speaker 1: which has the same end result, it just takes a
Speaker 1: whole lot longer and requires certain circumstances. Right, And that
Speaker 1: is literally the most like surface level explanation of salt production.
Speaker 1: And that's all I'm going to give you fair I have. Though,
Speaker 1: Actually it's so funny, like some of the memories that emerge,
Speaker 1: Like I was like, oh my gosh, I've been to
Speaker 1: the salt festival, and I've been to a salt extraction site,
Speaker 1: historical one in Peru at the salt mines of Maras,
Speaker 1: and it's like, yeah, it goes back hundreds of years
Speaker 1: at least, and it was really fascinating to see these
Speaker 1: like tears of salt wells all fed by like a
Speaker 1: salty underground spring. And then there's like they're harvested. I
Speaker 1: had for a while, like a little baggy of salt
Speaker 1: from Did you eat it? I did at some point,
Speaker 1: and then I don't know what happened to it. I
Speaker 1: lost it in the move, like one of my thousands
Speaker 1: of moves. Yeah, and then there are also there are
Speaker 1: lots of other steps and aspects to the extraction or
Speaker 1: production of salt, you know, things like purification, the different
Speaker 1: types of salt the origins. Some are more prize than others,
Speaker 1: some are considered crude or adulterated, or.
Speaker 2: Like just gross.
Speaker 1: Salt production was so central to some towns and cities
Speaker 1: that they took their name from the presence of salt mines.
Speaker 1: Salzburg in Austria meaning roughly salt settlement, salt Coats in Scotland,
Speaker 1: Saltville in Virginia, Hall and Germany. Many towns in England
Speaker 1: ending with which like Middlewich, Northwich, Sandwich, salt like which
Speaker 1: is often which is from what I could tell, which
Speaker 1: is often tied to like the like artisan production like
Speaker 1: there were like goods that were made there. But a
Speaker 1: lot of witch's towns that end in which are were
Speaker 1: like salt towns.
Speaker 2: They were salt towns. Interesting.
Speaker 1: Salt production was extremely profitable, as was its transport. In
Speaker 1: two thousand BCE, the Chinese government became the first to
Speaker 1: basically create a salt monopoly and to use it to
Speaker 1: become extremely prosperous, putting taxes on both domestically produced as
Speaker 1: well as imported salt. And it would be like I mean,
Speaker 1: it would be we can make salt for this amount,
Speaker 1: We'll charge ten times that like that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and thousands of years later, Venice did the same thing,
Speaker 1: first as a producer of salt and then by controlling
Speaker 1: commerce and supplying it to much of southern Europe. The
Speaker 1: Venetians themselves described salt as quote unquote the true foundation
Speaker 1: of our state.
Speaker 2: Okay, right, It was like salt.
Speaker 1: Made Venice in many ways. And while salt could make
Speaker 1: a region prosperous like Venice, in other cases such strict
Speaker 1: control over the stuff could lead to unrest. France had
Speaker 1: long had a salt tax since the thirteenth century, and man,
Speaker 1: people hated this tax. First of all, it was really
Speaker 1: unevenly applied and this like there could probably be a
Speaker 1: textbook written about this salt tax. But it was really
Speaker 1: unevenly applied, and so some regions were exempt while others weren't. Second,
Speaker 1: it was kind of a flat tax, so that people
Speaker 1: were forced to maybe buy a certain amount of salt
Speaker 1: even if they didn't need all of it, and pay
Speaker 1: taxes on it regardless of.
Speaker 2: How much they made.
Speaker 1: And so it was kind of this like unfair tax
Speaker 1: because everyone had to pay a certain amount, Okay, if
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Yeah, and salt was really expensive, so
Speaker 1: like the when people had to buy that, you know,
Speaker 1: the amount of that set amount of salt were required
Speaker 1: to that would be about one eighth of a peasant's
Speaker 1: yearly income. And it was like locally very expensive or
Speaker 1: like within France, so it was that was ten times
Speaker 1: more than a cost just across the border. And so
Speaker 1: salt smuggling became a huge thing.
Speaker 2: Sounds like healthcare in the US.
Speaker 1: Sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah, yep. And so yeah, people would
Speaker 1: go across border and smuggle salt back because they're like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to buy salt here, it's way too expensive.
Speaker 1: And then there were like designated salt police who had
Speaker 1: the right to enter houses to search for smuggled salt
Speaker 1: based on their own suspicion.
Speaker 2: Entire salt police.
Speaker 1: I mean, they probably did more.
Speaker 2: Things, but I imagine that all they did was salt.
Speaker 1: Same same.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Again, there is like so much more to the salt
Speaker 1: to salt tax, but it like it's so intense that
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church even sided with the French government, adding
Speaker 1: a treatise in sixteen seventy four that stated, quote for
Speaker 1: all Christians, smuggling of salt is a mortal sin id quote.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous. If you were caught, it could mean death.
Speaker 1: Every year, thousands of people were arrested for salt smuggling
Speaker 1: and either put in the galleys, forced to do labor,
Speaker 1: or they were hanged.
Speaker 2: What isn't this ridiculous?
Speaker 1: Yeah, one paper I read estimated that the last year
Speaker 1: before the French Revolution, thirty five hundred citizens were sentenced
Speaker 1: to death or the galleys for salt smuggling and so salt.
Speaker 1: Because of all of this ridiculousness around salt, it became
Speaker 1: a symbol of the injustices of the government of the monarchy.
Speaker 1: And so it has been suggested that salt was a
Speaker 1: contributing factor to the uprising leading to the French Revolution.
Speaker 2: Wow, not just the cake thing.
Speaker 1: Not just the cake.
Speaker 2: Don't let them eat salt, don't let make the cake
Speaker 2: no salt? Yep, how interesting?
Speaker 1: Erin isn't that wild? And it's like probably aspects of
Speaker 1: that have been exaggerated, but that is what Like, I
Speaker 1: have citations for these myths, right, But that's not the
Speaker 1: only revolution where salt has featured prominently. The oppressive British
Speaker 1: tax and monopoly on salt in India led Gandhi to
Speaker 1: March to the Sea in nineteen thirty in an act
Speaker 1: of civil disobedience, and eventually this helped pave the way
Speaker 1: for Indian independence, ending British colonial rule.
Speaker 2: So you know, I love it.
Speaker 1: I mean, given all of this, it is really strange
Speaker 1: to think about this thing that we probably all take
Speaker 1: for granted. Salt has something that created empires and cited revolution,
Speaker 1: was integral in religious ceremonies, and held such important meaning
Speaker 1: for thousands of years. Salt was a big deal. From
Speaker 1: the time of its first widespread production five thousand years
Speaker 1: ago to the Industrial Revolution, salt was, if not king,
Speaker 1: at least one of the major players in shaping human history.
Speaker 1: And over that time salt intake went from not very
Speaker 1: much at all. This is worthy of a larger discussion,
Speaker 1: but one book estimated that our paleolithic ants sesters consumed
Speaker 1: less than one gram of salt per day. Today, what
Speaker 1: is it like eight and a half grams on average
Speaker 1: per day ten ten Okay, I saw eight and a
Speaker 1: half somewhere. But yeah, dietary or like nutritional epidemiology is
Speaker 1: a challenge. But we went from not very much to
Speaker 1: orders of magnitude more and as we added more and
Speaker 1: more salted foods to our diet. Our salt consumption skyrocketed
Speaker 1: some regions that ate a lot of salted fish, like
Speaker 1: people in Sweden in the sixteenth century, for example, our
Speaker 1: estimated can't this does not seem right to me, But
Speaker 1: I read it somewhere are estimated to have eaten around
Speaker 1: one hundred grams per day, so that it seems.
Speaker 2: It seems impossible.
Speaker 1: Like maybe maybe that's if you're looking at just the
Speaker 1: straight salted fish. But if the salt was rinsed off,
Speaker 1: or if the fish were soaked and so like, I
Speaker 1: can't it being.
Speaker 2: That would be so salty.
Speaker 1: I know it hurts my mouth thinking about it, like
Speaker 1: dry like salt about it. Yeah. But in the book Salt,
Speaker 1: Kurlansky says that Europeans in the sixteenth through the eighteenth
Speaker 1: centuries were taking in about forty to seventy grams per day.
Speaker 1: But I've also seen lower estimates around like eighteen grams.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's so interesting, Aaron, because I was going to
Speaker 2: ask you if if there were any espect because I
Speaker 2: couldn't find any estimates from like, you know, the last
Speaker 2: few hundred years. Oh, this is all just such good
Speaker 2: fodder for its fodder.
Speaker 1: Uh but this is Yeah, so if even if it's
Speaker 1: at the lower end of the estimate, like eighteen grams,
Speaker 1: let's say it's twenty grams, that's still double what the
Speaker 1: average American consumes today, which is actually, uh double.
Speaker 2: Than what is recommended.
Speaker 1: And so we are doing a lot better nowadays, Like
Speaker 1: even though we're told that we're not, we are doing
Speaker 1: a lot better now than we were a few hundred
Speaker 1: years go. Why did salt intake go down? It's not
Speaker 1: because of health concerns.
Speaker 2: Let me just get that out of the way. It
Speaker 2: was because of refrigeration. Oh, that totally makes sense, right,
Speaker 2: It blew my mind. Yeah, so everything was way way
Speaker 2: so okay, there.
Speaker 1: Was let me just yeah recap us.
Speaker 2: So back in the day, like when we humans evolved
Speaker 2: into humans and started doing agriculture and all of that,
Speaker 2: initially we were consuming a minimal amount of salt. We
Speaker 2: weren't adding salt to our things. We were getting salt
Speaker 2: just from the places, like animals and salt if it
Speaker 2: was there, et cetera.
Speaker 1: For most of human history, we consumed very little salt,
Speaker 1: is what it seems.
Speaker 2: Yeah, then we figured out whoa, you can use salt
Speaker 2: to make things last a lot longer. So we started
Speaker 2: eating crep tons of it, tons of it, so an
Speaker 2: unbelievable amount. Then we invented the refrigerator, and we're like, cool,
Speaker 2: we don't need as much salt. There you think, there
Speaker 2: you go, and now we are today, and now we are.
Speaker 1: Here today, it's still eating salt because salt tastes good.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's like, that's the other thing is that like,
Speaker 1: and I know that you're going to get a little
Speaker 1: bit into the sort of the evolution the salt cravings
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, but there's a difference between tasting
Speaker 1: good and like needing salt for cocked but it is.
Speaker 1: It seems like it has been suggested that because that
Speaker 1: we think of salt like taste, salt tastes good to us.
Speaker 1: That's an adaptive trait because we would have needed more
Speaker 1: salt historically, I think, or we would have been maybe
Speaker 1: more on the.
Speaker 2: Edge and the tenuousness of it because we are omnivores,
Speaker 2: whereas like carnivores don't really have salt. We will talk
Speaker 2: more about it next week, but yeah, it's a there
Speaker 2: are reasons why salt tastes so good to yus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there are reasons also, I mean, there are
Speaker 1: reasons that salt tastes good and so therefore removing salt
Speaker 1: from foods, even though it's better for our health, makes
Speaker 1: people not want to eat those foods, which means that
Speaker 1: the salt industry doesn't want us doesn't want to remove
Speaker 1: the salt from foods. Anyway, we'll get to that next
Speaker 1: week too. But also I'm just putting in a plug
Speaker 1: now for a book Club episode that's coming out later
Speaker 1: this season, all about the history of refrigeration.
Speaker 2: It is fascinating.
Speaker 1: It's called Frostbite by Nicolotwilly and so stay tuned for that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it wasn't just refrigeration. There was also canning.
Speaker 1: So there were just alternatives to salt when it came
Speaker 1: to long term storage or transport renovation. Yeah, at the
Speaker 1: same time, the industrial revolution had made salt extraction much
Speaker 1: simpler using updated technologies and fuel, and so you have
Speaker 1: the simultaneous like drop and demand just as it had
Speaker 1: become easier to produce. So that explains in part why
Speaker 1: it's so cheap today. I mean, this was quite the
Speaker 1: fall from grace for salt to go from this like
Speaker 1: esteemed substance without which civilized life is not possible or whatever.
Speaker 1: Pliny said to We don't need you anymore. You're not
Speaker 1: welcome here.
Speaker 2: Maybe bad for.
Speaker 1: Me, Yeah, it's kind of hurt. That's like, that's quite
Speaker 1: a transformation.
Speaker 2: Salt is just like, oh.
Speaker 1: And then the death blow is about to come. Things
Speaker 1: were about to get a whole lot worse for NaCl.
Speaker 1: The salt Wars were about to begin. Tell me, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this is what you're gonna tell me about.
Speaker 2: Oh I thought it wasn't real war.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, I mean it's just like. I
Speaker 1: also don't know if it's just for the early part
Speaker 1: of the debate about salt or like, also if salt
Speaker 1: wars can be applied to the discussions that have been
Speaker 1: happening over the last few decades. But anyway, I'll tell you.
Speaker 1: In the late eighteen hundreds, when salt consumption began to decline,
Speaker 1: salt had a very different reputation than it does today.
Speaker 1: Rather than being seen as a contributing factor to cardiovascular disease,
Speaker 1: kidney disease, and other health issues, it was avoidance of
Speaker 1: salt that was thought to.
Speaker 2: Be bad for your health. Interesting what changed?
Speaker 1: It started with a trickle of papers suggesting that salt
Speaker 1: maybe wasn't as healthful as previously thought. In eighteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: a couple of researchers put forth the idea that salt
Speaker 1: pulled water from your tissues, increasing plasma volume and water retention.
Speaker 1: And then a researcher named Atchard in nineteen oh one
Speaker 1: suggested that salt consumption led to the edema of Bright's disease,
Speaker 1: which is chronic inflammation of the kidneys, and possibly a
Speaker 1: whole host of other conditions. And then in nineteen oh
Speaker 1: four is kind of really when the salt, not really
Speaker 1: the tides began to turn, but it was like this
Speaker 1: was the sticking idea. Two French scientists Ambard and Boujard
Speaker 1: published their hypothesis that high salt intake led to hypertension
Speaker 1: nineteen oh four, and this kicked off what would become
Speaker 1: known as the salt wars. Side note, though these two
Speaker 1: scientists were not the first to suggest the salt blood
Speaker 1: pressure hypothesis or sodium blood pressure. In fact, several thousand
Speaker 1: years before, around twenty six hundred BCE, an ancient Chinese
Speaker 1: medical text warns of the relationship between salt and hypertension.
Speaker 2: Interesting quote, If.
Speaker 1: Too much salt is used in blood, the pulse hardens
Speaker 1: end quote. Isn't that fascinating?
Speaker 2: It is really fascinating. It was like someone said it
Speaker 2: way back when. But they're like, yeah, that's fine though, Yeah,
Speaker 2: we're all dying from infectious disease well before hypertension becomes
Speaker 2: a problem.
Speaker 1: I mean that's probably a big part of it too.
Speaker 1: They're like, well, just never got it, never caught up
Speaker 1: with you, right, Yeah, But thousands of years later, we're
Speaker 1: still fighting about this. Right after the paper by Ambard
Speaker 1: and other researchers attempted to replicate their findings. Essentially, what
Speaker 1: these two had done was feed six patients with hypertension
Speaker 1: varying amounts of salt and found that those who were
Speaker 1: on lower sodium diets had a reduction in blood pressure.
Speaker 1: But the replication part of this was tricky. There they
Speaker 1: often didn't include controls. The first study by Ambard and
Speaker 1: Bouchard did not. The results were not very clear cut
Speaker 1: and was like for some maybe it did something, for
Speaker 1: others it didn't, you know, And it didn't specifically implicate salt,
Speaker 1: and only salt in the blood pressure changes that they observed.
Speaker 1: Because it was like a whole dietary shift. So it
Speaker 1: was like, was it less salt or was it also
Speaker 1: that you're eating more rice? Or you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, yeah, such a good question.
Speaker 1: Some scientists did observe a reduction in blood pressure with
Speaker 1: declining levels of sodium, while others saw no difference whatsoever,
Speaker 1: and so it was like kind of all over the place.
Speaker 1: By the mid twentieth century, the consensus was a weak one. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: low salt diets did seem to improve blood pressure, but
Speaker 1: only in a subset of people. Add on to this
Speaker 1: the fact that low salt diets are not tasty when
Speaker 1: you've been used to eating loads of salt, and people
Speaker 1: were not keen on the idea of limiting salt as
Speaker 1: a way to treat high blood pressure. But some researchers
Speaker 1: kept on looking because if salt reduction can be helpful,
Speaker 1: like how and why this could save lives? And so
Speaker 1: the second half of the twentieth century saw a ton
Speaker 1: of studies much more carefully designed, carried out on the
Speaker 1: relationship between sodium intake and hypertension, and as with their
Speaker 1: earlier research, the results were mixed and the message became complicated,
Speaker 1: not easily communicated within a headline, because whoever actually reads like.
Speaker 2: The body of text in an article.
Speaker 1: The nuance surrounding any aspect of nutrition and health is huge,
Speaker 1: and salt is no exception. There are industry groups like
Speaker 1: the Salt Institute also through their hat and their consultants,
Speaker 1: sometimes physicians or academic into the mix, which further muddied
Speaker 1: the waters. And after years of back and forth and
Speaker 1: well technically and commentaries on articles and replies to those commentaries,
Speaker 1: it seems that we now have maybe a clearer picture
Speaker 1: on the relationship between sodium and hypertension.
Speaker 2: Maybe not.
Speaker 1: I'll let you tell us next week.
Speaker 2: Okay, I can't wait too. That was such a good setup, Aaron. Oh,
Speaker 2: thank you, thank you, thank you, Salt salts. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: am thrilled to keep going with this me too, because yeah,
Speaker 2: that was just such a good way to set up,
Speaker 2: especially this idea that like thousands of years ago, we
Speaker 2: were consuming minimal salt many thousands of years ago. Yes,
Speaker 2: then for potentially thousands of years we were consuming so
Speaker 2: much salt. And now where are we at today? I
Speaker 2: can't wait to say are we Oh?
Speaker 1: It's so exciting and there is like this was. There
Speaker 1: is so much to the history of salt. You could
Speaker 1: read whole books on recipes with salt. I mean there
Speaker 1: really that the Kurlansky Salt Book just is mostly recipes
Speaker 1: that I feel like is what it ended up being.
Speaker 1: It's it's a really interesting I just love the history
Speaker 1: of food too, I think, is what I'm realizing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 1: But if you would like to learn more about salt,
Speaker 1: I've got some sources for you. So I don't know
Speaker 1: if I would give the Salt Book a resounding recommendation.
Speaker 1: I actually found it like not very well organized and
Speaker 1: so a little bit disappointing in that regard. But there
Speaker 1: are lots of other papers about salt. There was one
Speaker 1: by I think it was called bo Cirillo from nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four, a History of Salt block from nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: six Salt in Human History there, and then if you
Speaker 1: want to learn about the origins of the Salt Wars,
Speaker 1: there's one by de nicol Antonio and O'Keefe from twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen called the History of the Salt Wars, and just
Speaker 1: a whole bunch more that I will post on the
Speaker 1: website this podcast. Yeah, yeah, thank you to Bloodmobile for
Speaker 1: providing the music for this episode and all of our episodes.
Speaker 2: Thank you to Leanna and Tom and Brent and Pete
Speaker 2: and Jessica and everyone else I'd exactly right Network for
Speaker 2: making all this possible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and thanks to you listeners for listening.
Speaker 2: Tell us what you think about salts.
Speaker 1: Do you have any fun salt facts to share?
Speaker 2: And make sure that you're subscribed so you don't miss
Speaker 2: next week's episode. Oh yeah, yeah, because that's where the
Speaker 2: meat of it really is. No, so this was meat,
Speaker 2: no salted meat, betam.
Speaker 1: This was the seasoning. Next week is the substance.
Speaker 2: And a special thank you also to our patrons. Thank
Speaker 2: you so so much for your support. It really does
Speaker 2: mean the world to us. Well, until next time, wash
Speaker 2: your hands, you filthy animals.