Table Salt: a cheap and useful Prepping supply

Ordinary table salt is inexpensive, even if you buy brand-name at retail. It is cheap cheap stuff. But it’s also a sometimes overlooked prepping supply. This post is a quick overview of the usefulness of salt.

First, table salt (NaCl) is an essential nutrient — actually two essential nutrients sodium (Na) and chloride (Cl). These are two of the six electrolytes that you need in any healthy diet: sodium, chloride, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, calcium. Without sufficient amounts of all these electrolytes in your diet, including sufficient salt, you will be unhealthy. In fact, your body cannot survive without these nutrients.

So when you hear all these media messages, giving you the impression that everyone should be on a low-sodium or a salt-free diet, you should take it with a grain of salt. Sure, the typical unhealthy American diet has too much salt in it. But if you eat a relatively healthy diet, without too much fast food or junk food, you might not be getting enough salt. Maximum recommended intake, according to the CDC and the Institute of Medicine is 2300 mg of sodium, which is 5.9 grams of salt (NaCl) or about one teaspoon of salt per day.

Second, iodized salt offers an essential micronutrient. This trace element is needed by the thyroid gland; it is also necessary for normal brain development.

Third, salt can be used to help keep stored food dry. I take a whole container of salt, cut it open, and empty it into the bottom of a 5-gallon bucket. Then the stored food that needs to be kept dry, like flour or nuts, is placed on top, in a paper container so that the salt can absorb moisture from the food.

Fourth, small amounts of salt can be added to water that has been purified with water purification filters, to improve the taste.

Fifth, salt can be used as a food preservative. See this Grit.com article: “Preserve Food with Salt.”

So there are good health reasons and some prepping reasons to have a supply of iodized salt on hand.

- Thoreau