5 Things You Didn't Know About The Salt On Your Table & What Melissa At HimalaSalt Is Doing To Keep Salt Healthy
The health food market continues to grow as people are becoming much more aware of what they’re putting into their bodies and how their environment is filled with toxic chemicals. HimalaSalt makes life a little simpler, because you can be confident you’re making a healthy choice with the salt you eat.
1) Your salt could be pure, or more likely it could be filled with allergens and toxic chemicals.
Salt has always been important to Melissa, the founder of HimalaSalt, because she believes in microbiotics and salt’s cleansing and purifying power. One day a student of hers and a friend, who knew she loved salt, gave her a gift of pink salt from the Himalayas. Melissa loved this salt and bought other pink salt when the gift ran out, but she quickly realized many pink versions of salt do not have the same health benefits. This was 14 years ago, and she couldn't find any on the market, so Melissa began trying to find a source, and it took over 3 years to find an ethical partner. Most salt is processed in mega factories (co-packers) that are processing all kinds of things – peanuts, animal parts, wheat, you name it. She visited these factories, including certified Organic and Kosher facilities, and described how she had to wear a mask because the air inside the factories was brown with particulate matter - all of which was getting into the salt. Melissa decided then and there to build her own processing facility as the only way to ensure the purity of her product. Melissa's factory is certified: Organic, Kosher, Gluten-Free, Non-GMO, Green-e, and chemical-free.
2) The water where the salt is gathered matters.
Because she is committed to the principles of the green economy, Melissa really wants to be able to offer a locally made salt. However, because big corporations have poisoned our seas, she doesn't want to use sea salt. She also looked to France for a pure salt, but the water quality in the northwest province of France is terrible because they have the highest concentration of pig farming (and conventional agriculture) in Europe. Unless you know your water source, you don't know what you're getting.
3) Salt mining is destructive.
After that first gift of salt from her student friend, Melissa lost touch with him and tried everything she could think of to find him. She wanted to find out where he had purchased the gift of salt. The salt mining she saw at the government owned mines in the Himalayas was totally unacceptable. They were using dynamite on a massive scale, and doing much more environmental destruction than was necessary to mine the salt.
4) Slaves could be mining your salt.
To make matters worse, the working conditions of the miners was appalling with few safety protections, low wages, and even the use of child slave labor. After seeing the workers in this wrenched state, Melissa told me that she decided to give up on her dream of starting HimalaSalt, because she couldn't find a good source. Serendipitously, the very day she decided to give up, her student called her! Melissa visited the student’s small family mine and realized she had found her perfect source of salt. These workers are paid double the prevailing wage, and use long drill bits (and hammers/picks) to harvest the salt in a less destructive manner.
5) Salt is a health food product.
Melissa says she is a quality freak. When she eats other types of salt her hands swell, but she has more energy with pink salt. A woman called her recently with news that her daughter is autistic and can only eat HimalaSalt and other pure foods. Melissa says that people with serious high blood pressure can benefit from the mineral content and purity of her salt. She feels good selling a product that helps people.
~ by Sarah Manski for PosiPlanet, the blog of the founders of PosiPair.com
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