Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and this is Stuff
Speaker 1: you should Know the podcast. Oh yeah, Jerry's over there.
Speaker 1: She's all laughy today for some reason. The salty dog.
Speaker 1: Why did salty calling someone salty? I wonder where that
Speaker 1: came from. I meant to look that up. It's someone
Speaker 1: I didn't look up because you know, you're in a
Speaker 1: salty nod. Yeah, I've said that plenty uh and once
Speaker 1: that comes from like a salty dog. Here's here, this
Speaker 1: is this is my idea. Okay, so salty described somebody
Speaker 1: who is a little coarse, a little rough around the edges,
Speaker 1: a little upset. Hear me out because their faces usually
Speaker 1: puckered into like a a sour puss face. And what
Speaker 1: makes your face pucker eating salt. So there's a salty person, okay,
Speaker 1: I would call them lemony. Well, so take something with
Speaker 1: a grain of salt. Actually ancient that's from the romans Um.
Speaker 1: They would take poison with a grain of salt, or's
Speaker 1: something that was hard to swallow with a grain of
Speaker 1: salt to make it go down more easily. Okay, somebody
Speaker 1: not being worth their salt. In this article it says
Speaker 1: that um slaves were traded with salt, and if you
Speaker 1: got your hands on like a slave, that wasn't worth
Speaker 1: much Like that, he wasn't worth his salt. Is that
Speaker 1: not the origin I found? The first reference in print
Speaker 1: came from an eighteen oh five description or book about
Speaker 1: an expedition to Guinea Bissau, and it mentions a guy
Speaker 1: who wasn't worth his salt. He's a good man, Peter
Speaker 1: Hale h a y eli um, but he wasn't worth
Speaker 1: his salt, the guy said. And I looked it up
Speaker 1: and I couldn't find that whether Hale was hired or
Speaker 1: was a slave. But I got the impression that, Um,
Speaker 1: what the guy was talking about wasn't that he had
Speaker 1: traded salt for hail, but not worth the salt like
Speaker 1: in his body. No, he was not worth the salt,
Speaker 1: meaning a salary, which supposedly salary is rooted in the
Speaker 1: idea of paying someone in salt, same with soldiers salt
Speaker 1: dre and to give salt salad to The word salad
Speaker 1: comes from the word salt, so salt is a it's
Speaker 1: a it's an important thing. Historically speaking, there's been economies
Speaker 1: largely based on salt. There have been um cultures rated
Speaker 1: by other cultures because of salt. Um. If you were
Speaker 1: an ancient salt producing area, probably the rulers control with
Speaker 1: the tight grip um that salt production and salt distribution um.
Speaker 1: And that actually carried on into the modern age when
Speaker 1: the when Great Britain was occupying India, they had a
Speaker 1: tight control on salt production there um. And actually Gandhi
Speaker 1: started a revolution or helped along the revolution to overthrow
Speaker 1: British imperial power through a salt protest. He walked two
Speaker 1: hundred and forty miles to the coast where the salt
Speaker 1: production facilities were and grabbed a bit of salty clay
Speaker 1: and boiled it, boiled the salt out of it, which
Speaker 1: was an illegal act, and that protests spurred other similar protests,
Speaker 1: and the British were like, oh, hey, you can't do that, mate,
Speaker 1: you can't mind your own salt. But he did because
Speaker 1: he was Gandhi. It was called the Salt March to
Speaker 1: Dandhi by gand by Gandhi. Uh yeah. Salt dates back
Speaker 1: to sixty b C. And they actually found evidence of
Speaker 1: salt trading in prehistoric times. So obviously it's used to
Speaker 1: spice food is great, but it's used to preserve food.
Speaker 1: Was super able, yeah back in the day and still today,
Speaker 1: because salt is one of these things. You remember, Nature
Speaker 1: loves homeostasis, it loves balance. If you introduce salt to
Speaker 1: the mix, it kind of throws off that balance. So
Speaker 1: to gain homeostasis, salt is introduced into say meat. It
Speaker 1: likes to go into the meat, but it also draws
Speaker 1: out the moisture, whether it's blood, water, whatever, so it
Speaker 1: dries out the meat. It introduces the salt and it
Speaker 1: draws out the moisture. That's right. That's called curing, which
Speaker 1: preserves things because anytime bacteria comes in contact with that
Speaker 1: salty meat, from that point on, the bacteria boom gets
Speaker 1: dried out and dies. Yeah, that's why packaged foods are
Speaker 1: still loaded with sodium. Unfortunately, I got some stuff on
Speaker 1: that later. But it was used as a currency in
Speaker 1: Ethiopia up until the twentieth century, and was used as
Speaker 1: a form of suicide in China for nobility. They would
Speaker 1: o d on salt and kill themselves. Oh yeah, because
Speaker 1: it was expensive and very valuable. So nobility, that's like,
Speaker 1: it was like a noble way to go out. And
Speaker 1: we'll talk in a minute, like what happens when you
Speaker 1: have too much salt? It's not very pleasant. It's not
Speaker 1: very pleasant. But you know in medieval Europe, remember we
Speaker 1: did the ten medieval torture devices this episode, well we
Speaker 1: skipped one called the goats tongue, and it was apparently
Speaker 1: a real thing, a tickle torture. They would dip your feet,
Speaker 1: bringing a goat, and the goat would lick the bottom
Speaker 1: of your feet and then they would dip it again.
Speaker 1: And from that in the description, no, I'm saying like
Speaker 1: it wasn't in there. Um from the description, apparently being
Speaker 1: tortured tickle tortured was not pleasant. I would love to
Speaker 1: have my feet looked by a goat. They would do
Speaker 1: it until you did not love it. That was the
Speaker 1: point of the goats tongue to it. Sounds like fun
Speaker 1: to me. Uh. And the Middle Ages, salt was transported
Speaker 1: along the notorious Old Salt Route and northern Germany. I
Speaker 1: know what I'm gonna get you for Christmas, now, a
Speaker 1: go in some salt water. I've had both at the
Speaker 1: same time. I don't know, I didn't think about it. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was played this big role in early America as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Massachusetts Bay Colony had the first pattern to produce salt
Speaker 1: here in the colonies, saltwater, and uh they did so
Speaker 1: for two hundred years. Uh. The Erie Canal opened primarily
Speaker 1: to transport salt. Yeah, they called it the ditch that
Speaker 1: salt built. It sounds like something you just made up. No,
Speaker 1: I swear I've been on the Erie Canal. Oh. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they have this nice system of locks, and um, they
Speaker 1: used to there's still like donkey trails from where the
Speaker 1: donkeys used to pull these little flat bottom boats that
Speaker 1: would carry salt and whatnot. And now yuppies walk along
Speaker 1: those trails. Dog yuppies. A they're still yuppies. Oh yeah, thanks, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I heard one the other day. Uh, dual income large
Speaker 1: dog owner. All right. And the early salt was apparently
Speaker 1: four times expensive as beef because salt was valuable obviously,
Speaker 1: and we were allows you with beef. And in Civil
Speaker 1: War salt played a big part in the Union strategy. Um,
Speaker 1: there were quite a few battles fault over capturing salt
Speaker 1: works and salt mines. Yeah, in Saltville, Virginia. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: wonder what they do there. And it actually had a
Speaker 1: big effect on the salt shortage on the Confederate troops. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not just the troops, but the people behind the lines
Speaker 1: back in the Confederate States were like, we want our salt,
Speaker 1: and they had a huge impact on morale apparently, I
Speaker 1: would say so. And the reason why salt is so important.
Speaker 1: If you haven't gotten the impression that it is important
Speaker 1: by now, you should rewind the podcast and just listen
Speaker 1: to the last several minutes over again. Yeah, salt is
Speaker 1: extraordinarily important because the human body requires it. It's something
Speaker 1: that we need to survive and to live, so much
Speaker 1: so that we actually have a taste sense for it.
Speaker 1: It's the only you don't need better to live, or
Speaker 1: sour or umami. As a matter of fact, things like
Speaker 1: bitter and sour are there. I think to detect things
Speaker 1: that we shouldn't be eating. Salt is to detect something
Speaker 1: we need that's right and we can. Actually, this is
Speaker 1: so mind blowing to me. I love the human body.
Speaker 1: I think it's amazingly wonderful in ways that we don't
Speaker 1: even fully understand yet. But consider this. When you need salt,
Speaker 1: your body produces a craving in you for salt that
Speaker 1: is awesome. Like I'm one of those believers. I I
Speaker 1: don't follow it necessarily myself, but in a diet, well,
Speaker 1: no thing, But in a diet where you just eat
Speaker 1: what you crave, I think you can go off the
Speaker 1: rails because I think that we uh have the wrong
Speaker 1: things now. Yes, now, but if you could go back
Speaker 1: a hundred fifty years, maybe I would bet you could
Speaker 1: survive pretty easily and thrive on a diet where you
Speaker 1: were just kind of led by your cravings, like oh
Speaker 1: it need some megs and eat a couple of eggs, steak.
Speaker 1: You don't know. You should pay attention to yourself, listen
Speaker 1: to what your body is telling you, and I'll bet
Speaker 1: you find that you do have specific cravings for specific moods,
Speaker 1: foods that are like very simple meat like chuck go
Speaker 1: eat a steak, Chuck go eat some eggs, like things
Speaker 1: that are basic staples. I'll bet you'll notice you have
Speaker 1: cravings salt. Uh. Let's let's break it down chemically. Um
Speaker 1: it's sodium and chlorine are the two basic elements, and salt.
Speaker 1: I think we all know this, which are electrolytes. That's right,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into that in a minute. Um, sodium
Speaker 1: is silvery white metal, and it is neither one of
Speaker 1: these are like super friendly independently of one another. No,
Speaker 1: you know, like especially chlorine. Yeah, sodium reacts violently if
Speaker 1: you mix it with water and oxidizes in air. Chlorine
Speaker 1: exists in gas at a room temperature. They're both really volatile.
Speaker 1: But when you put them together and you have sodium chloride,
Speaker 1: they make beautiful music, makes beautiful halite, uh, and beautiful music.
Speaker 1: And sodium chloride is is about a sixty sodium to chloride,
Speaker 1: by the way, is that right? Yeah? It makes little cubes, right, Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is it? The molecules are cubicle, right. The sodium packs
Speaker 1: in pretty tight, and then the chlorine fills in the
Speaker 1: rest and they make tiny little cubes. It's actually reversed,
Speaker 1: That's what I said. Yeah, the chloride is packed and
Speaker 1: then the sodium fills in. But you know, I would
Speaker 1: have thought the sodium was bigger. Oh well, Um, will
Speaker 1: you have is an A C L. That's right? And
Speaker 1: you mentioned electrolytes. Those are minerals that conduct electricity in
Speaker 1: our body and our fluids and tissues, which is very
Speaker 1: important important as muscle movement, we run on electricity. Heart
Speaker 1: involuntary muscle UM moves through electrical impulse. I guess all
Speaker 1: muscles do. Yeah, you want your eyes to blank, buddy? Yeah,
Speaker 1: eat some salt, right, And so there's two conditions that
Speaker 1: you can have conceivably well three, three would be just
Speaker 1: all the systems are normal. But um, the other two
Speaker 1: is too little salt and too much salt. And too
Speaker 1: little salt is called hypoon atrema. Yeah, that's what that
Speaker 1: lady died of the hold your WI for a week contest?
Speaker 1: Oh is that right? Yeah? You can o d on water,
Speaker 1: and I guess that's what you would ultimately die from.
Speaker 1: Is hypone tremea their water toxicity. Um, if you have
Speaker 1: too much water, you probably have too little salt, because
Speaker 1: water flush is salt from your system is the method
Speaker 1: that your kidneys use to maintain the balance of salt
Speaker 1: and other electrolytes in your body. And that's why you
Speaker 1: might drink gatorade if you're working out, because it has
Speaker 1: electrolytes in it, right, exactly. You don't want to water
Speaker 1: your crop land with it, though, as we found from
Speaker 1: the movie Idiocracy. Yeah, and actually found too that in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties there was a lot of controversy over
Speaker 1: salting roads killing roadside vegetation. Well, yeah, for sure. I
Speaker 1: mean like that, if you were into conquests and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, and you wanted to make sure that
Speaker 1: the land you just occupied couldn't be used to grow
Speaker 1: crops to feed an imposing armor army, you would plow
Speaker 1: the land with salt. Salt the earth, yeah, which is
Speaker 1: not the salt of the earth, because that means you're
Speaker 1: a good fellah, but not a good fella because those
Speaker 1: guys are salty. Wow, look at you. That was that
Speaker 1: was a team effort. Clever wordplay, my friend. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you take diuretics um or you have like massive diarrhea
Speaker 1: for a period of days, or vomiting or some sort
Speaker 1: of stomach bug, you might be at risk for hyponatremia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you're flushing out all of this, all of your
Speaker 1: electual lights. This is salt that your body needs. So
Speaker 1: if it's out of balance, you're going to suffer things like, um, well,
Speaker 1: an inability for your heart to beat, which is often fatal. Yea,
Speaker 1: kidney problems, yeah, um on the other hand, you can
Speaker 1: have hypernit tremia, which is too much salt, and like
Speaker 1: you said, if you're a Chinese aristocrat, um, you may
Speaker 1: die from hyper netremia. Yeah. They even had a m
Speaker 1: man sometimes a blanket on word how to manual. Well,
Speaker 1: it's sort of like how many grams of salt you
Speaker 1: needed per pound in your body? That like a chart.
Speaker 1: I guess if you want to kill yourself in China,
Speaker 1: yours I you do it. Yeah, there's so much salt
Speaker 1: you need? That was ro is he like that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I'm off today. No, you know, I'm a little off.
Speaker 1: You were on my my microphone just swerved to the left,
Speaker 1: but were happening. There's a ghost in here. Um, so
Speaker 1: too much sodium, I think you said already is hypern
Speaker 1: tremia instead of hypo hyper hyper hypo exactly. It's like glacemia,
Speaker 1: but with no tremia exactly, and with hypernutremia. Basically, remember
Speaker 1: how salt if you um, if you introduce it to say,
Speaker 1: a jerky of some sort, it will dry it out. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's just a shameful thing to do. Um. If you
Speaker 1: introduce it to a meat or something like that, it's
Speaker 1: going to dry it out because through osmosis in search
Speaker 1: of homeostasis, um, it does the same thing to your
Speaker 1: blood and your extracellular fluids. That salt will draw out
Speaker 1: the fluids in your cells, but will maintain it in
Speaker 1: your blood. It's water retention basically. Yeah, your kidneys, when
Speaker 1: it has too much salt to deal with, kicks it
Speaker 1: around the blood supply. Just like remember in the hangover
Speaker 1: episode when you why drugs are so fatal when you
Speaker 1: drink a lot of alcohol because your kidneys are trying
Speaker 1: to process your the alcohol, so it keeps the drugs
Speaker 1: just going around and around in your blood supply. Same
Speaker 1: thing with too much salt. If your kidneys have too
Speaker 1: much to deal with, they just keep the excess going
Speaker 1: around in your blood. And since that salt is drawing
Speaker 1: out all the excess moisture and increase is the volume
Speaker 1: of your blood, which makes your blood pressure rise, which
Speaker 1: makes your heart beat, yes, which supposedly logically would put
Speaker 1: you at risk for a stroker heart attack, and that's
Speaker 1: how you would die from hypernatremia. Yeah, I have high
Speaker 1: blood pressure. Well, supposedly sodium. Cutting your sodium down isn't
Speaker 1: going to help. Yeah, there's a lot of conflicting data
Speaker 1: on that for sure. Um, well we'll get to nutrition soon.
Speaker 1: We'll cover that. Well, how about before we move on,
Speaker 1: do you want to do a message break? So chuck. Um.
Speaker 1: They're like you said, there's a lot of controversy over
Speaker 1: how much salt or how little salt you should have
Speaker 1: on a daily basis in your diet. Yeah. Um, the
Speaker 1: Heart National Heart, Blood and Long Institute say no more
Speaker 1: than two point four grams of sodium. It's about a
Speaker 1: teaspoon per day. Americans they found consume an average of
Speaker 1: a about three point four per day, So that's one
Speaker 1: gram too much on average. And um, you actually don't
Speaker 1: need more than about a half a gram a day
Speaker 1: if you want to maintain that stasis. So yeah, just
Speaker 1: for your electro light intake. The thing is, though, um,
Speaker 1: there was for many years because it makes sense that
Speaker 1: if you're if too much salt increases your blood pressure,
Speaker 1: then too much salt should be um, should put you
Speaker 1: at risk for strokes and heart attacks. Right. Well, the
Speaker 1: CDC panel surveyed material and all did and all all
Speaker 1: sorts of studies that found no, cutting your sodium intake
Speaker 1: doesn't really doesn't decrease your risk of heart attack or stroke.
Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, there is was it
Speaker 1: just more hereditary. They don't know what it is. They
Speaker 1: just know that basically below three thousand grams or three
Speaker 1: thousand milligrams of salt and above seven thousand mill grams
Speaker 1: of salt a day were two groups that were at
Speaker 1: higher risk of heart attack. So if you have too
Speaker 1: little salt, you're at higher risk of heart attack. To okay,
Speaker 1: so try to keep it between three thousand and four
Speaker 1: thousand milligrams three thousand and seven th The thing is
Speaker 1: is they they don't They weren't comfortable making any recommendation.
Speaker 1: They were just sayone scared, this is what we found.
Speaker 1: Everyone scared, like, go on the record, yeah, because we
Speaker 1: just don't know. Like, it doesn't make any sense that
Speaker 1: you would have a heart attack if you ate less
Speaker 1: than three grams of sault today. That that flies in
Speaker 1: the face of of um conventional wisdom, and nobody's figured
Speaker 1: out why yet. Interesting, Well, it's something you should monitor
Speaker 1: at the very least, because I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people look at fat grams and calories and all that
Speaker 1: stuff is great to look at nutritionally, but um, when
Speaker 1: you start poking around on the soup can and you see, Wow,
Speaker 1: this chicken noodle soup has milligrams of sodium, but it's
Speaker 1: so good. And this one little can which is almost
Speaker 1: a gram of sodium, yeah close to it. A quarter
Speaker 1: pounder with bacon and cheese. You didn't do Big Max,
Speaker 1: Now I should have been communist. I think Big Max.
Speaker 1: Actually I did see this is milligrams. The big Mac
Speaker 1: I think was around leven pounds more. With the bacon.
Speaker 1: I think they have like a whole bacon onion ranch
Speaker 1: or something topping that you can put on quarter pounders.
Speaker 1: Now I've not yet tried this, but like I think
Speaker 1: about it from time to time, like right now, yeah,
Speaker 1: right now, especially uh so at anyway, just give it
Speaker 1: a look. Like soups are notoriously high in sodium. Package
Speaker 1: foods are notoriously high in sodium. Um, don't just think
Speaker 1: about the table salt that you use, Like, oh, I
Speaker 1: didn't salt my food that much today. You need a
Speaker 1: lot of package food or eating a lot of sodium. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and nobody can tell you how much you should be
Speaker 1: eating or shouldn't be eating. But like you said, it's
Speaker 1: good to just pay attention to that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: because you probably are eating a lot more than you realize,
Speaker 1: and you should be eating a lot of package food anyway,
Speaker 1: I'll just go ahead and say that, so um chuck, Yes,
Speaker 1: what kinds of salt are there? Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: I should say I love salt to Salt and pepper
Speaker 1: are my favorite two spices. I'm from the South, have
Speaker 1: a taste for salt um and pork fat. Yeah that's
Speaker 1: pretty southern too, Yeah for sure. Uh So I love salt.
Speaker 1: I like good Mediterranean sea salt. That's what I used
Speaker 1: at my house. Uh and I'm gonna plug this local saltier.
Speaker 1: I just made that word up oh later in the show. Okay,
Speaker 1: But um, I'm a big salt fan. I like salt too.
Speaker 1: I like sweet, I like ummi, I like um sour.
Speaker 1: I'm training myself to like bitter through the use of kampari. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like I I've found out that I'm a bitter super taster. So,
Speaker 1: like things that seem like normal to other people are
Speaker 1: like really bitter to me. Like one example, fruit, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's like like it just gustingly bitter to me.
Speaker 1: Like I can't understand how the rest of humanity eats
Speaker 1: grape fruit. I don't like grapefruit. Well, maybe you're a
Speaker 1: bitter super taster too, But I have to tell you this,
Speaker 1: I've trained myself to like um, grapefruit and coompari just
Speaker 1: by exposure, like I've come to appreciate them. With campari,
Speaker 1: it's a bar like a bitter DIGESTI for Appritif you
Speaker 1: do like a campari and soda, it's in a negrowning right. Oh,
Speaker 1: I think I've seen people like if their stomachs upset
Speaker 1: or is that bitters and soda? Well, campari is a
Speaker 1: type of bitters. It's not that super compact bitters like angustura,
Speaker 1: but it is a type of bitter. I think it's
Speaker 1: a DIGESTI Okay, it's good stuff anyway. I like salt.
Speaker 1: What I'm really saying there is I like well seasoned food.
Speaker 1: And if you're a chef or a home chef, you
Speaker 1: know that salt is important to cooking, super important and
Speaker 1: baking obviously, but bland food can't do it. No, what's
Speaker 1: the point. What is the point? Agreed? Types of salt,
Speaker 1: well start with table salt and and like man, if
Speaker 1: your if your doctor put you on like a bland
Speaker 1: food diet, I feel for you. But there's stuff out
Speaker 1: there you can eat. There's spike, there's Mrs Dash, there's
Speaker 1: you should be seasoning your food to some extent, like
Speaker 1: bland food is is like it's bland life. Yeah. They
Speaker 1: even have the imitation salt of the New and New salt.
Speaker 1: I didn't do any research on that, but I've bought
Speaker 1: it before. You do you like it? I didn't use
Speaker 1: it that much, but it's it exists in my home
Speaker 1: thanks to the empty thing of Mediterranean sea salt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, it's the table salt is the first one
Speaker 1: we should cover. That's the traditional um either iodized or
Speaker 1: non iodized, fine grained salt that you see in many
Speaker 1: many homes and restaurants, and it's IDEs. They did a
Speaker 1: little research into this. Did you look up iodie salt? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean I know that they they added it because
Speaker 1: at one point it was like fluoride. They thought, well,
Speaker 1: we need this in a good place to put it
Speaker 1: in salt. Yeah, because most people use salt, and we'll
Speaker 1: just put it into table salt because it's an easy additive.
Speaker 1: But um, there was a real problem with hyper thyroidism,
Speaker 1: things like Goiter's mental retardation. UM just poor fetal development
Speaker 1: linked to um iodine deficiency. So they put it in salt,
Speaker 1: and apparently there it's considered to be responsible for this
Speaker 1: thing called the Flynn effect, which there was like a
Speaker 1: three i Q point rise in the middle of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century in western nations and nobody could figure out
Speaker 1: what it is. And they think now that it was
Speaker 1: because they added iodine to salt, and so it had
Speaker 1: the aggregate effect of raising our i Q by um
Speaker 1: preventing poor fetal development. Yeah. Well, it's still a problem
Speaker 1: in other parts of the world, just not here in
Speaker 1: North America, right, other parts of the world that don't
Speaker 1: have IDI salt. You know, dumb they are. Oh man,
Speaker 1: that was terrible. I'm just kidding. You need to apologize
Speaker 1: to the rest of the world. I'm sorry everybody. Uh So,
Speaker 1: like I said, table saw, this is the most common salt. Uh.
Speaker 1: They remove all the impurities. Um. They have things in
Speaker 1: there to make it not clump and stick together, and
Speaker 1: so it pours freely, so even when it rains, it pours. Well,
Speaker 1: should we get to that. Yeah, don't you have something
Speaker 1: on that? Yeah? The UM I just for some reason
Speaker 1: thought of the Morton salt girl, and like every great
Speaker 1: advertising story, they were like, how do we It was
Speaker 1: sort of a new thing at the time, in nineteen
Speaker 1: eleven two package salt this way in a container with
Speaker 1: a spout. How they package it before? I don't know,
Speaker 1: the blocks, probably like a deer like or something. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure actually, but I know that this was a
Speaker 1: fairly revolutionary product to package it like this and process
Speaker 1: it like this. Um So the agency was um In
Speaker 1: w Air and Company, and Don Draper walks in and says,
Speaker 1: they've got twelve proposals for you, which one do you like?
Speaker 1: And Sterling Morton of the Morton Company, of course, it's
Speaker 1: always someone else, like his son or his wife or something.
Speaker 1: It was his son in secretary. Um pointed toward one
Speaker 1: of the ads with a little girl holding the umbrella
Speaker 1: and said this is the one, And he said, you
Speaker 1: know what, I think you guys are right. The whole
Speaker 1: story is right there in the picture. Because the whole
Speaker 1: point was this salt doesn't clump when it rains at poors,
Speaker 1: and the little girls can't be trusted to be sent
Speaker 1: to the store by themselves because they ruin all the salt.
Speaker 1: Keeping the nozzle open on the way home. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: of the different um slogans they had was flows freely,
Speaker 1: runs freely, pours, it never rains, but it pours. And
Speaker 1: then they finally settled on when it rains at poors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the best because it never rains but it pors.
Speaker 1: Doesn't make any sense. They probably fired that person. And
Speaker 1: she's been updated one to three, four five times. Oh
Speaker 1: really yeah, the last time in nineteen sixty eight and
Speaker 1: she's been the same since then. And there was never
Speaker 1: a real model for that girl. That's a question they
Speaker 1: often get. She totally made up. Yeah, because he was like,
Speaker 1: it's Morton's granddaughters. What you know, you want to thank
Speaker 1: Selma Selma Morton. So that is the story of the Sken.
Speaker 1: That's an old timing name. If ever there was one
Speaker 1: that's a college right, No, it's like a person's name. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a college too. Had a friend that played soccer
Speaker 1: there e r s k I ny there's a college
Speaker 1: named Colgate too. It's like crazy to me, Uh, Sea
Speaker 1: Salt Sir is next. Uh. It's gonna cost you some
Speaker 1: more money because of several reasons, one of which if
Speaker 1: they go old school and In some parts of France,
Speaker 1: they still harvest the stuff by hand, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: You might see it called flair to sell, which is
Speaker 1: French for flower of salt, and uh, it's not processed
Speaker 1: like table salt is. So you're gonna have a lot
Speaker 1: of those trace minerals. It's gonna be coarse and flaky,
Speaker 1: and it colors it too. It can for sure, like
Speaker 1: you can have white sea salt, pink, black, gray, or
Speaker 1: a combination of them. Pink salts are traditionally associated with
Speaker 1: him alay and salt um, and there the pink is
Speaker 1: often for the result of things like copper or iron
Speaker 1: or apparently um. There's a type that contains an algae,
Speaker 1: a salt tolerant algae, which would make it an extreme
Speaker 1: aphile um. That gives it has the beta caroteen pigment
Speaker 1: in it, and that gives it a pinkish hue. That salt.
Speaker 1: You're eating algae, pink algae in your salt, which is
Speaker 1: pretty neat. That is pretty neat, and that that's Hawaiian, right.
Speaker 1: A lot of times Hawaii has a different one and alaya,
Speaker 1: Oh I read that as algae, Yeah, I did too.
Speaker 1: A couple of times and I was like, why would
Speaker 1: they separate these two out there's no g No, it's
Speaker 1: a Hawaiian Alaya salt has iron oxide in it from
Speaker 1: the volcanoes. Oh, that makes sense. And WHOI also produces
Speaker 1: black salt too from the lava. Yeah, in a little
Speaker 1: bit of charcoal. I'll have to try some of those actually,
Speaker 1: and yeah, and then there's gray salts to um, which
Speaker 1: is uh, there's cell gree which is from France. And
Speaker 1: then smoked salt is also gray, where they just take
Speaker 1: some salt and smoke it. Yeah, they put it over
Speaker 1: a smoky fire, and you have smoked salt. Do you
Speaker 1: like smoky foods sometimes? Yeah, it could be a little
Speaker 1: overbearing for me at times. Yeah, in the hands of
Speaker 1: you know, I guess somebody who knows what they're doing
Speaker 1: with the smoked It's like, I like a good smoked meat,
Speaker 1: little day type of thing, but not necessarily like you know,
Speaker 1: when they add like artificial smoke in the kitchen to
Speaker 1: it to a meal. You know what I'm saying. Although
Speaker 1: smoked cheese is good, oh yeah, man, good smokey. And
Speaker 1: thanks to fan Hillary Lozar from for sending us some
Speaker 1: great cheese. Yeah, that was very good to you. I
Speaker 1: had some of that smoked goody yesterday. Actually when I
Speaker 1: got home, I haven't had it yet. Is it good?
Speaker 1: And as soon as I walked in the door, I
Speaker 1: got a knife out. It's like, I gotta try this stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah's delicious anyway, Thanks Hilary. Um So, chefs and Gormond's
Speaker 1: will say sea salt is what you want to be
Speaker 1: using because you're gonna get a unique flavor from those
Speaker 1: minerals that are not in table salt. I agree with them.
Speaker 1: It's tough to bake with though, Yeah, it's tough to measure.
Speaker 1: You get a lot more precise measuring, for sure from
Speaker 1: table salt. And they don't recommend you bake with sea salt, no,
Speaker 1: because baking is a specific chemical reaction. Cooking is different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they say that they most chefs don't cook with sea salt,
Speaker 1: but they will just add it as a topper. But
Speaker 1: I've cooked with sea salt and I have no plenty
Speaker 1: of chefs that cooked with sea salt, So I disagree
Speaker 1: with that. Um Well, they with the topper, they mean
Speaker 1: like it's a finishing salt. It brings out like all
Speaker 1: the flavors if you sprinkle it on them. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's definitely used, but I've also seen it used
Speaker 1: in the food right so well, that leads us to
Speaker 1: kash your salt. Apparently some people like to cook with
Speaker 1: kosher salt. And if you are using following a recipe
Speaker 1: and you're switching out the whatever amount of salt is
Speaker 1: called for, you want to double it because kasher salt
Speaker 1: is larger, coarse grained salt. And here to me is
Speaker 1: a fact of the podcast, want to several Kosher salt
Speaker 1: is not necessarily kosher itself. It's used to make things kosher.
Speaker 1: That I didn't. I thought kasher salt was like salt
Speaker 1: that had been blessed by a rabbi or something. Really
Speaker 1: I never understood it, but now I do. It's it's
Speaker 1: salt they used to make things kosher. If you use
Speaker 1: table salt UH to make something kosher, it's not gonna work.
Speaker 1: Kasher salt because it's large and coarse grained. UH makes
Speaker 1: meat kosher by drawing the blood out because eating blood
Speaker 1: ain't kosher. So if you salt it with kosher salt,
Speaker 1: it's gonna draw the blood out of the meat. Then bam,
Speaker 1: you have a kosher cut of steak baby boom. And
Speaker 1: it's not iodized either, right by the way. Um. And
Speaker 1: then we have the redheaded step child of the salt family,
Speaker 1: rock salt, which is used. Um. It's got a lot
Speaker 1: of impurities, it's unrefined, it's very large grained, and it's
Speaker 1: used to melt ice on roads and sidewalks and to
Speaker 1: make homemade ice cream. Yeah, and probably some other stuff.
Speaker 1: But do you know of any other uses? I think
Speaker 1: rock salts used in um, some chemical productions. That makes sense. Um,
Speaker 1: if you want to make a good industrial brine, rock
Speaker 1: salts your your man. Yeah, alright, salt mining, that's how
Speaker 1: you get salt, because it is a natural thing that
Speaker 1: exists in the earth. UM. The largest producer of salt
Speaker 1: these days, no surprise, is China. UM. In two thousand
Speaker 1: twelve they produced about sixty five million tons. The US
Speaker 1: is not too far behind a forty four million. Then
Speaker 1: you've got Germany, India and Australia as the other leading
Speaker 1: top five salt producers these days. In India gets the
Speaker 1: profit from in salt production thanks to Gandhi. I guess so,
Speaker 1: huh that's pretty neat. And think about that. The number
Speaker 1: four on the list. Yeah, and they weren't even allowed
Speaker 1: to produce it not so long ago. No, they were
Speaker 1: allowed to produce it, but all the money went to Yeah,
Speaker 1: okay jerks. So there's three types of mining main three
Speaker 1: main types. There's deep shaft mining, solar evaporation, and solution mining.
Speaker 1: And deep shaft mining is basically like any other type
Speaker 1: of mining, where you just um, drill a shaft down
Speaker 1: into a mine, which an underground sea bed is what
Speaker 1: where the salt is, right, that's where you get your salt. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I think that's one of the facts of the podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're ancient underground seabed, ancients beds that dried up and
Speaker 1: the salt remained and they formed, um these basically salt
Speaker 1: deposits that can be dozens or hundreds of feet thick
Speaker 1: and massively wide, and you drill down into these things.
Speaker 1: You create a couple of shafts, and then they usually
Speaker 1: use what's called a room and pillar system, which really helps.
Speaker 1: It's very difficult to explain, but if you see a
Speaker 1: picture of it it makes perfect sense. But um, you're
Speaker 1: basically creating a checkerboard pattern going down in mining. The
Speaker 1: salt deposits so you leave it right, Yeah, you blast
Speaker 1: a room, but you leave a couple of adjacent rooms
Speaker 1: for support and then um, eventually you've you've mined out
Speaker 1: all the salt and then you fill it with industrial waste.
Speaker 1: That is one thing they do. So that's deep shaft mining. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And they'll remove the salt there and crush it and
Speaker 1: uh pull it to the service and further process it
Speaker 1: from there, depending on what kind of salts you want
Speaker 1: in the end. Right. And there's this awesome mine um
Speaker 1: called the Wheelishka Salt Mine in Cracow, Poland, and it
Speaker 1: has a full on cathedral made out of salt. Amazing.
Speaker 1: They have several like chapels, but then a full cathedral
Speaker 1: um and it's all made us salts in this old
Speaker 1: salt mine that's not a UNESCO site um. And they
Speaker 1: went to the trouble of boiling salt. It was a
Speaker 1: table salt mine. They would boil this raw salt and
Speaker 1: purify it and then use that purified salt to make
Speaker 1: crystal chandeliers out of salt. Like, the whole cathedral is
Speaker 1: just salt. It's amazing looking man. Yeah, check it out.
Speaker 1: No goats allowed. They would recap it or no chucks allowed,
Speaker 1: just walk around like licking stuff. They would ask you nothing. Uh.
Speaker 1: A deep shaft mining, by the way, I think is
Speaker 1: usually rock salt is what they're producing there. And then
Speaker 1: there's solution mining. Yeah, that's UM. Basically they take a
Speaker 1: well over a salt bed and then inject water in
Speaker 1: there and make a brine and then pump it up
Speaker 1: from the underground as as a wet solution and into
Speaker 1: a vacuum pan, which is gonna seal it up, and
Speaker 1: they're gonna boil it and then evaporate it, which is
Speaker 1: you know how they made salt back in the old
Speaker 1: days too, They would you know, boil it and evaporate
Speaker 1: it and then scrape the pan, right, So it's kind
Speaker 1: of a modern version of that. Then they dry it
Speaker 1: out and refine it, and then from there they're gonna
Speaker 1: either add anti clumping agents or iodine, depending on what
Speaker 1: you want. And then um, with solution mining, you've got
Speaker 1: like a salt bed or a salt dome that's exposed
Speaker 1: because it's somehow through tectonic action. Uh, an ancient seabed
Speaker 1: or salt bed has been exposed to the above ground
Speaker 1: like the surface of the Earth. Right, and then what's
Speaker 1: what's the last one. Well, the old school solar method
Speaker 1: um solar evaporation. This is when you have a salt
Speaker 1: lake or seawater and wind in the sun cooperate with
Speaker 1: the shallow pools and they leave salt behind and you
Speaker 1: can only harvested about once a year, once it reaches
Speaker 1: a certain level of harvestability, um of thickness and uh
Speaker 1: something like we said, sometimes it's still done by hand,
Speaker 1: even although it is industrialized in other places for sure.
Speaker 1: But you know, they wash it, they clean it, they
Speaker 1: drain it, but they leave the um a lot of
Speaker 1: impurities in there. And this stuff is almost a percent
Speaker 1: pure sodium chloride. It's good stuff. And like I said,
Speaker 1: I used the Mediterranean version generally, but Australia is a
Speaker 1: big on it too, on this method. And um, we
Speaker 1: should probably mention also that salt has a lot of
Speaker 1: religious significance. It's just a it's an ancient important thing
Speaker 1: to mankind. Yeah, they would like use it to seal
Speaker 1: important things. Yeah, in the Old Testament, which is pretty old. Uh,
Speaker 1: Lot's wife, I believe her name is Sarah, was it
Speaker 1: Sarah Ruth? Who was married a Lot turned into a
Speaker 1: pillar of salt when she looked behind her. Even though,
Speaker 1: guys that don't turn around, I'll turn you into a
Speaker 1: pillar of salt. Yeah, and she did. And apparently there's
Speaker 1: a there's a salt pillar at Mount ararat Um that's
Speaker 1: called Lot's wife. People are like, that's her right there,
Speaker 1: and who who uh is it? Buddhists that board off
Speaker 1: evil with salt. Yes, um Umi has a little shaker
Speaker 1: of salt that her mom put in her glove compartment
Speaker 1: of her car. If they like flickr off on the
Speaker 1: just a protector. Yeah that's nice. See I would have
Speaker 1: eaten it. Yeah. Well that's why I don't let you ride.
Speaker 1: That's right, one of several reasons they out of the bots,
Speaker 1: you got anything else? I do? I have this good thing.
Speaker 1: And there's a Roman senator named Cassio Doris and he said, quote,
Speaker 1: mankind can live without gold, but not without salt. Who's
Speaker 1: that cassio key boartists? Yet? Well you got Jerry again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's giggly today. And I have a plug because here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta there's a a lady who makes salts. But
Speaker 1: if you go to Facebook and type in beauty, a
Speaker 1: full briny sea salt go to her Facebook page and
Speaker 1: click on the about thing. You will see her lovely homemade,
Speaker 1: handcrafted salts. And my favorite is the magic unicorn. See
Speaker 1: if this sounds good. Sea salt is of course the
Speaker 1: main ingredient smoked paprika, lemon, garlic, rosemary, and celery seed.
Speaker 1: Well it does sound good. It's delicious. You get some
Speaker 1: broccoli and some cauliflower, some like beets and big chunks
Speaker 1: of garlic, throw it out the window and buy a
Speaker 1: steak and put this magical unicorn on it some olive oil,
Speaker 1: sprinkle it with this stuff, bake it in the oven.
Speaker 1: Delicious to go with that steak. You know. Yeah, magic
Speaker 1: unicorn is my favorite. Uh. And the black Truffle salt
Speaker 1: is delicious. And then she has one called camp Fire,
Speaker 1: which is smoked salt with cumin and anto chili powder.
Speaker 1: And uh, if you email info at Beautiful Briny Sea
Speaker 1: Salt dot com you can order some of this stuff.
Speaker 1: And I told Emily she's frind or as I said,
Speaker 1: tell her, I'm gonna plugger, so she better get her
Speaker 1: little fingers working, you know, nic start making some salt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the stuff you should army is a salty crowd
Speaker 1: So if you want to learn more about salt, I
Speaker 1: don't know how you possibly could, but if you want
Speaker 1: to look into it, you can type the word as
Speaker 1: a LT into the search bar how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com and it will bring up this article how salt works.
Speaker 1: And since I said search part, that means it's time
Speaker 1: for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this. We should
Speaker 1: apologize to cops. What do we do now? Well, this
Speaker 1: cop wrote in and it well, I'll just read it.
Speaker 1: Is it the police chase this one? Yeah? Yeah, they
Speaker 1: didn't like that one. Hey guys, my name is Glenn.
Speaker 1: I'm a police officer in southern California. I've been enjoying
Speaker 1: the podcast for years. I suspect our political leanings made
Speaker 1: different times, but I always enjoy learning and listening to
Speaker 1: different points of view. Listen to the December sev Hunt podcast.
Speaker 1: That's not the police chase one. You're right, but I
Speaker 1: think it involves something like that. I felt it was
Speaker 1: very accurate with the accept of some information you provided
Speaker 1: about the l a p D. Um We batched the
Speaker 1: l a p D before for their history of corruption.
Speaker 1: They have a pretty thick history of corruption, but they're
Speaker 1: not all bad. Ladies and men. Well, no, of course not. Um.
Speaker 1: You mentioned that officers were super jumpy during the man
Speaker 1: hunt for Christopher Dorner, which was a fair assessment. But
Speaker 1: here's where you got something kind of wrong. Um. You
Speaker 1: stated that the l a p D fired on two
Speaker 1: uninvolved vehicles. It was the l a p D who
Speaker 1: shot at one in the Torrent's Police Department shot at
Speaker 1: the other. I could see how someone not from the
Speaker 1: area might think they were l A p D. So
Speaker 1: it's not the big of a deal. However, the bigger
Speaker 1: mistake is that you stated that these shootings killed two people.
Speaker 1: Nobody was killed, So I need to go back. I
Speaker 1: saw in several places that at least two people were killed, Yeah,
Speaker 1: accidentally from those shootings. I'll go back and look again. Okay,
Speaker 1: but Glenn Josh takes issue. Sir, Well, he's not the
Speaker 1: only one who's written in I just haven't gotten around
Speaker 1: going back and looking and double checking. But I mean,
Speaker 1: while we were re searching, I came across that and
Speaker 1: it wasn't like on a forum or message board or something.
Speaker 1: I think they were in articles. Okay, well, we'll get
Speaker 1: to the bottom of it. Uh he was, Glenn says
Speaker 1: I'm very surprised you would make such a statement without
Speaker 1: doing your own work. I did my homework. You typically
Speaker 1: appear to go to great links to fact check. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you get the feeling you guys are not the biggest
Speaker 1: fans of law enforcement. UM not. And I even recognize
Speaker 1: my profession shortcomings for sure, just like you, though. I
Speaker 1: want facts um influencing the show, not personal opinions. And
Speaker 1: this email was not intended to justify the actions of
Speaker 1: those two police departments. Just to set the record straight, understood,
Speaker 1: And despite the goof and the cop bashing ha ha,
Speaker 1: I still love the show. That's from Glenn Um and Glenn,
Speaker 1: I don't hate cops. I love cops. Um. We've done
Speaker 1: a lot of like super supportive shows on law enforcement,
Speaker 1: name talks like The Law Enforcement Dude. But I don't
Speaker 1: like jerks, And I think a lot of times people's
Speaker 1: experience with cops or when they're pulled over and not
Speaker 1: being helped by a cop, which is unfortunate because they
Speaker 1: do much great work. But you know, when you get
Speaker 1: pulled over and you're hassled by a jerk cop, you think, man,
Speaker 1: what a jerk cop. It's like eating at a bad restaurant.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. Like restaurant, you tell one
Speaker 1: or two people you have a bad experience at a restaurant,
Speaker 1: you tell like twenty people. It's like fifty fold with cops.
Speaker 1: So we have a lot of respect for law enforcement
Speaker 1: for sure, for all they do. So I hope that
Speaker 1: doesn't across come across is any differently nice, very excitful
Speaker 1: to Yeah, thanks Glenn, Yeah, thank you Glenn. I'll go
Speaker 1: back in double check. If I'm wrong, I'll admit it.
Speaker 1: I just haven't had a chance to look again. We'll
Speaker 1: give them twenty licks off of a black as vault
Speaker 1: from a goat, and I might die of hyper natremia. Man,
Speaker 1: that wrapped it all up right there. If you want
Speaker 1: to get in touch with me and chuck to correct us,
Speaker 1: take issue with something we said, whatever, um, you can
Speaker 1: tweet to us at s Y s K Podcast. You
Speaker 1: can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff
Speaker 1: Podcast at Discovery dot com, and as always, check us
Speaker 1: out at our cool home on the web, Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands
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