is salt really heated to 1200 degrees F?

Question

I'm trying to eat healthy so I can do more physical work. Anyways, can anyone confirm or deny this, is table salt really heated to 1200 degrees F? I don't know about you but I'm a little skeptical of anything heated that high. My oven only goes to 450 degrees. If I want a good balance of flavor, health, mouth-feel, and monetary cost, which salt is best? I also read sea salt might not really be sea salt.

I found this article by Trisha Gilkerson at:

http://www.intoxicatedonlife.com/2013/04/10/table-salt-vs-sea-salt/

"Table salt is heated to over 1200 degrees fahrenheit under high pressure. If you know even a little bit about chemistry, you’ll probably remember that heat and pressure alter the chemical structure of molecules. (this is also why processed honey is devoid of any nutritional value)"

"The term “sea salt” can be a deceptive misnomer. Be forewarned that all “sea salt” is not created equal. Virtually all salt makers can claim their salt is “sea salt” because at one point it came from the sea. There are some brands of sea salt on your grocery store shelves (I’m not going to name names) that are pretty much regularly processed and bleached salt (minus the iodine) repackaged with a pretty “sea salt” label."

Answer

much of the commercial table salt is extracted as brine from underground deposits. holes drilled, fresh water pumped down, salty water forced up, salty water "reduced" by temperature and vacuum until crystals result. that somewhere in that salty water to dried crystals in a box the stuff is exposed to super high temperatures (likely for faster processing....) is very possible.

the colored "fancy" salts - pink/green/black/etc - are mined from solid deposits. those solid deposits got their color from various and sundry "mineral impurities" a few hundred million years ago - and some of these specialty salts get right cotton picking expensive - $25-50 per pound...and up.

if you have not had your daily dose of internet hyperbole, google "himalayan pink salt"

there are companies that pump seawater into shallow ponds and grow old waiting for the sun to evaporate the water from the pond, leaving a flat cake of salt. almost without exception all these companies claim their sea water/sea salt contains "more better something" than the other guy.

bottom line: you need to ask the salt maker what the process is because there is not one single way to do it.

Answer

Trisha sounds like a quack. Honey contains calories. You need calories to live. Accordingly, honey has nutritional value. As for salt, it's salt. People who make a living fear mongering latch onto whatever distinction they can find and then try to convince you - with no scientific support - that it's bad for you.

Answer

Websites like that make me wonder if they still teach basic science in school these days.

Salt, good old NaCl, is a very simple mineral, one highly soluble in water but a mineral nonetheless. There are a number of ways to obtain and refine it, some of which leave trace impurities behind: minerals are rarely found in a pure state in nature. Somewhere along the line the "white is bad" thinking that applied to wheat flour and rice got transferred over to salt; combine that with marketing and a lot of people have become convinced that somehow salts that retain their natural impurities are better.

All salt is sea salt, ultimately. Most of the salt used in food is mined - that is, extracted from ancient sea deposits laid down millennia ago, then refined. There are still some operations in the SF Bay Area that harvest salt by evaporating shallow ponds filled with salt water, scrapping up the crust and then refining it. If you think pink Himalayan salt is worth the hype, it's your money.

Back to the chemistry: heating sodium chloride to 1200F does little or nothing to it except maybe burn off some organic impurities. Sodium chloride melts above 1400F. Salt actually has good heat retention properties, which is why it's used in preparing dishes like salt-baked prawns and as a bed for Oysters Rockefeller.

Answer

This is insanity masquerading as - I don't even know. Any moron can have a blog and this one is ahead of the bell curve on stupidity.

Answer

One other thing. Even if it were true, so what? This moron adds some nonsense:

"f you know even a little bit about chemistry, you’ll probably remember that heat and pressure alter the chemical structure of molecules."

How do you then draw any conclusion from that statement? Salt is a mineral. It's inorganic. Even if you heat it to 1,200 degrees, it stays salt. There's no alteration of chemical structure.

It's stringing together words with specific meanings into statements that have no meaning. Like beat poetry in reverse.

Answer

Yes, heating MOLECULES does often break covalent bonds. SALT is NOT a molecule, though. 
IF you did heat salt high enough to break the ionic bonds, you'd create metallic sodium and gaseous chlorine, both highly reactive and poisonous substances. THERE IS NO REASON TO DO THIS, it is a really really bad idea.

Answer

If salt is the linchpin of your attempt to have a healthy diet, you already have a problem. If you're eating enough salt that the variety would make a nutritional difference to you, then you're eating too much salt. In reasonable quantities, the type of salt you consume will make absolutely no difference except for the iodine it may or may not contain. Use the prettiest salt you can afford and eat good food.

Answer

sodium chloride is sodium chloride is sodium chloride.

Whatever nutbag told you that the "chemical structure" of the salt was altered has zero understanding of chemistry.

p.s. salt is a mineral. It's basically a rock, it has no problems with high temperatures.

Answer

Does anyone feel like they walked into a sketch from Portlandia?

Answer

Plenty of people have already debunked this part:

"Table salt is heated to over 1200 degrees fahrenheit under high pressure. If you know even a little bit about chemistry, you’ll probably remember that heat and pressure alter the chemical structure of molecules. (this is also why processed honey is devoid of any nutritional value)"

As for the taste of salt, when it's used in an application where the salt is used to season a dish, it's completely indistinguishable. Some salts you can taste the difference when it's used to finish a dish.

One of the times I went to Per Se there was a bread and butter and fancy salts from all around the world course...it was interesting to try them that way...but at the end of the day it's freaking salt.

Answer

And the sun is like a million degrees, can you believe it is used to grow food? Better stay indoors.

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Salt...is a rock.

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Sorry to try to be rational here, but I really would not worry about it. We have been eating common table salt for a long time and the kinds of problems you ae concerned about would have long since been apparent. Plain old salt is one of the simplest things in your kitchen. I like kosher salt for the clean flavor.

Answer

This is nonsense. It doesn't matter how hot it gets, at the end of processing purified salt, you have pur NaCl. One molecule of NaCl is exactly like every other molecule of NaCl no matter how it was produced. There are only two things which can be different between one salt and another: impurities and the physical structure of the crystals.

Answer

I can not believe the ignorance here.

The ONLY salt worth using is distilled from the sweat of a unicorn collected by a virgin maiden.

Shesh...

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Crazy junk science non-sense! She needs to learn a lot more about chemistry instead of "know(ing) even a little bit about chemistry"

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Currently my favorite finishing salt is the light peach/pink colored Murray River Salt. High in mineral content and relatively low sodium content, this salt also is comprised of wide thin flakes that are delicate and soft and dissolve very easily.

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I only use salt that gets crapped out by civet cats. No wait! That's my coffee!

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Highly recommend reading, SALT: A World History, by Mark Kurlansky to see just how much salt has influenced human history and modern society as we know it.

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Let me try another example. The rock salt used to salt most of our roads and sidewalks in the winter varies very little chemically from table salt. Yet the taste difference is HUGE! Just try grinding it on your food!

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Salt (NaCl) is salt (NaCl)... I don't know why people just don't get this?

Check out this lunacy -> "The white salt that you may have in your salt shaker is processed salt. It is not 'real salt' since it is heated to above 1000º F. Now if you want to eat raw, you know that this is not good and certainly not raw. This extreme heating process has chemically altered its composition. In essence, the salt is dead."

How is it not real salt? It's the same salt... The salt is dead? I'd hope so, salt is not a living organism to begin with.

I've also heard people talk about organic natrium and the like, as if there's a difference between natrium and natrium (except for isotopes... but as far as I could tell the most stable of those lasted for two weeks ;) )...

It's like with additives... People go nuts because they use the scientific name for something common, or an e-number like they do here in Europe, regardless of what that additive actually is. A little checking will reveal that the strange additive E300 is actually the scary sounding ascorbic acid... Or *drumroll* vitamin C! ;) And if they found out that someone made a compound called x in a lab, they will go out of their way to avoid it, while happily consuming 'natural' x, because, you know, natural is good... Never mind that it's the same thing...

Answer

Thanks for asking this question. I have seen that information bit "table salt is processed at 1200 degrees" over and over again on various websites. I think it might be an urban legend repeated on websites where no one is fact checking the information. I did see at madehow.com that some table salt is heated to 365 degrees to dry it. I also wonder about the "bleaching", does it really need bleaching when it is almost pure sodium chloride? 

Seems like the main differences between table salt and sea salt would be the trace minerals that are sometimes present in sea salt and the anti-caking agent that is sometimes absent from sea salt. Some sea salts do contain anti-caking agents. For example, morton sea salt contains "yellow prussiate of soda" as an anti-caking agent.

Personally, I get a weird metallic, sharp taste from standard table salt. I sprinkle unrefined pink salt on my food because I can taste a difference.

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is salt really heated to 1200 degrees F?

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