Okay, so here is my dilemma -
Salt vs. Sea Salt vs. Salt Substitute vs. Kosher Salt
Everything I read lately when its a "healthy" recipe, or better for you stuff they use or have sea salt. I compared labels yesterday at the store. The Sodium intake is the same with the sea salt and table salt per tsp. the kosher salt had less sodium per tsp (but the ingredients were the same as the sea salt). Then the salt substitute has WAY less sodium, but a bunch of stuff I can't pronounce. So what is better for you? I don't know! Please weigh in with opinions, or facts, because I am truly at a loss. I bought Natural Sea Salt yesterday because that was the only one with one ingredient. But I don't know if that is truly the way to go (not that I use a lot of salt anyway).
Definitely kosher or sea salt. They're pure and have no added chemicals. If the price of sea salt is daunting, try the kosher salt.
ReplyDeleteIt's also best when cooking to buy low sodium ingredients and add your own salt to taste. You'll inevitably end up using less.
A couple of books you may want to check out:
What to Eat by Marion Nestle
Real Food by Nina Planck
It's easy when "dieting" to suddenly find yourself consuming all kinds of "replacement" chemicals instead of natural ingredients. The real key is moderation and whole foods.
Good luck! :)
Harmony
One more thought...you say you don't use a lot of salt, but do a thorough sodium evaluation of the products you regularly buy, and see what you're really getting. It may be a lot more than you think!
ReplyDeleteThanks Harmony! The cost was not something I was concerned about as on container of salt will last me well over a year. Over the last several years, since my mom's heart attack, I have switched everything I can to low sodium or no added sodium, etc. This was just an area I was ignorant about. Especially since the sodium per mg. were exactly the same on the container. So like you said, I ended up with the "natural" version of sea salt because it only had salt. All the others (regular sea salt, kosher, etc.) have one other ingrediant at least as a "anti caking agent" that I figured I could do without. Thank you for you input. I am also wondering if sea salt has a stronger flavor? It seems to me that it does cuz when I lightly sprinkled it on my sweet potato fries last night (which was less than my normal salting of fries) it seemed saltier. Maybe I'm fooling myself, but if this is true I suppose that would mean ultimately a person would use less of the sea salt than table salt, resulting in less MG's of sodium.
ReplyDeleteThanks again Harmony :):):)