[HN Gopher] Why salt was so important throughout history (2018)
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Why salt was so important throughout history (2018)
Author : kaycebasques
Score : 86 points
Date : 2021-11-15 16:51 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bookworm.club)
(TXT) w3m dump (bookworm.club)
| bullen wrote:
| Most people misunderstand the accounting part of why salt was
| important, everyone knows what salt looks like and how much it's
| worth. It's a value comparator = it's used to compare other
| products (for example if a sheep is worth say 750 grams and a cow
| is worth 850g then you can exchange sheep and cows with some salt
| to cover the difference) this is the most valuable characteristic
| of money, something universal to build trade from. Seashells also
| work well in some places, not as a store of value but as trade
| enablers. I'm guessing no exchange was ever made in the history
| of man without this kind of value comparative, long before the
| term money was even discovered.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Interesting. Along the same lines I would imagine it was one of
| the easiest "currencies" to confirm the authenticity of... a
| quick lick and you'll know whether or not you're being ripped
| off with a counterfeit.
| obiwan14 wrote:
| One, then, has to wonder what the consensus algorithm was to
| determine the truthfulness of the taste (lick) test. Did they
| manage to put it on a blockchain?
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| > I'm guessing no exchange was ever made in the history of man
| without this kind of value comparative, long before the term
| money was even discovered.
|
| I used to think this as well but it's apparently not true! In
| hunter gatherer tribes (and probably early agricultural groups)
| it sufficed for two parties to agree that one was getting the
| better deal and agree there was a debt. Then in a later
| transaction the debt would likely go the other direction, as
| the party in debt for the first transaction overpaid. This
| cycle seems to have repeated indefinitely if everyone stayed on
| reasonably good terms. Importantly, the stability of
| communities was the bedrock of these types interactions. Once
| communities got extremely large (1000s) or travelers became
| common place, the kind of comparative you're discussing seems
| to have become more important.
|
| I'd recommend reading "Debt, the First 5000 Years" to learn
| more
| kaycebasques wrote:
| The economies of scale in salt (and hot sauce baffle me). Let me
| use the hot sauce example, because it's a little more fun, but
| all the ideas apply equally to salt. How is it that I can buy a
| big jar of Crystal's hot sauce for like $2? Someone had to plant
| those peppers, produce vinegar, bottle it, transport it to San
| Francisco, let the grocery store mark it up, and it still only
| costs $2???
| gbronner wrote:
| I saw a video that suggested that the sriracha guys have an
| area roughly 1/3rd the size of manhattan under cultivation.
|
| Nobody cares what those peppers look like, and the tilling,
| planting, and harvesting, washing, and crushing are all pretty
| automated. Vinegar and salt are also pretty cheap, as is
| bottling equipment.
| jonshariat wrote:
| Ditto. It also blows my mind how stores operate. I think how
| can they offer so much verity and stay in business? They paid
| for all this food and its all going bad or out of season, how?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I don't know specifically about Crystal, but when I went to
| Avery Island a couple hours away I saw Tabasco/McIlhenny had
| whole warehouses of drying and pickling peppers - I imagine
| they can control supply as needed and keep the wholesale price
| where they want.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| We also live in an era of cheap energy. 'Astonishingly cheap'
| doesn't even begin to describe how much more we have to work
| with than our ancestors did. It enables modern economies of
| scale and things like buying imported prosciutto from Italy
| rather than just buying some preserved ham from the local
| farmers market.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Think about it this way. It is about margin (where the profit
| comes from). Keep that marginal cost equal to your marginal rev
| and you are doing good. Stray too far and you are leaving money
| on the table or maybe taking a loss. Control a couple of key
| aspects of production and your marginal cost can be low. In
| this case I would say the jar and lid is probably the most
| expensive bit and the salsa is probably made by the barrel
| full. Also most grocery stores do not set the prices or own
| goods on the shelves. The wholesalers/vendors typically do and
| the grocers rent out the shelves to them based on location in
| the store, height off the floor, and length/depth of shelf
| needed.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Salt is important because its required to live. You'll die far
| quicker with no salt in your diet than too much.
| abdel_nasser wrote:
| people fail to recognize that people ate a lot less back in the
| days that salt was so precious. they also ate a lot more fat.
| eating less and having more protein and fat meant that they had
| less insulin in their blood and also more ketones in their blood.
| insulin tells your body to hold on to things including water and
| when you dont have a lot of insulin you lose more water and
| sodium with it. and ketones are a diuretic which promote the loss
| of water even more.
|
| sodium replaces insulin because it also causes your body to hold
| on to water. so it was very important because you needed it to
| offset lower insulin and also because you were losing it much
| more. if you didnt have access to salt back then you would have
| become very ill.
|
| a modern person who eats almost nothing but sugar in one form or
| another and in enormous quantities has so much insulin that they
| barely need any sodium unless they drink large amounts of water.
| we even tell people to have less sodium. but earlier people
| werent that way.
| hammock wrote:
| Off topic, but I visited the Atlas Obscura-worthy "Wieliczka"
| Salt Mine which is a short drive from Krakow. Incredible place.
|
| I have been to my share of mines and caves but never to a salt
| mine. This mine is massive and has entire underground lakes and
| even a chapel, with a beautiful Last Supper relief and altar and
| chandeliers all hand-carved from the salt walls - by tradesmen no
| less, not artists. They actually have mass in the chapel every
| week.
|
| The massive salt deposits were what enabled the Polish kingdom to
| even be a thing. It was a huge economic boom.
|
| Highly recommend a visit if you are in the area.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wieliczka_Salt_Mine
| credit_guy wrote:
| This summer I visited the remarkable Slanic mine in Romania
| [1]. No matter how much you prepare, it's still breathtaking
| when you get there. The chambers I visited were all about 50
| meters tall. You could have football fields in there, bleachers
| included. I took pictures, but I just don't know how to share
| them; still, I found this one [2] that gives a sense of the
| scale.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sl%C4%83nic_mine
|
| [2] https://www.romania-insider.com/planetarium-slanic-salt-
| mine
| debacle wrote:
| What does the air smell like? Is it like being by the ocean? Is
| the smell stronger?
| eatmygodetia wrote:
| It smells incredibly clean. The air is very pure, apparently,
| and it's meant to be good for your healthm I noticed this -
| my cold cleared up while I was there (and started again soon
| after). There's a slight cave smell, but not really. I don't
| know what it's like to smell like being by tue ocean, but I
| don't remember it smelling much like british beaches.
| hammock wrote:
| It smells pretty clean/normal.
|
| You can lick the walls and they taste like salt.
| foolfoolz wrote:
| i never understood why salt was (is?) so valuable yet is
| available in seemingly endless quantities in the ocean
| watwut wrote:
| Because inland areas exists and are large. Transportation was
| expensive and slow.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| In general you need good climate and geography to produce large
| quantity of salt in salt marshes.
|
| Then, once you have done that, transporting it from coastal
| areas was also a big undertaking.
| debacle wrote:
| It's heavy, hard to recycle, and time and labor intensive to
| create.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Removing it from the ocean is far from easy. It requires large
| amounts of fuel, time and space.
| gruez wrote:
| same reason why we have water shortages yet it's available in
| seemingly endless quantities in the ocean.
| jimmyed wrote:
| Not exactly a fair analogy, since we need a very large amount
| of water per head compared to salt (unless you are a freman).
| gruez wrote:
| That explains why there are water shortages in nevada, but
| even in places that are close to the ocean (ie. logistics
| is a non-issue) there are water shortages. eg.
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56798308
| b3kart wrote:
| My guess: extracting it from the ocean water requires
| evaporation, which in turn requires a lot of energy/fuel?
| k__ wrote:
| Doesn't it evaporate on its own over time?
| wikidani wrote:
| Yes, but I think that maybe in colder regions it's probably
| not cost effective. Specially in winter. So that would kind
| of explain why the polish salt mine mentioned earlier was
| important
| debacle wrote:
| Digging the pan, hardening it (so it's relatively
| impermeable to sea water), and then repeatedly evaporating
| the water until you have a brine rich enough in salt to
| precipitate, and then massing that salt slush so it can
| completely dry, and then smashing it into a usable form.
|
| You can look at salt pans on Google Maps. Here is one I
| have been to:
|
| https://goo.gl/maps/uN968Stn6kPHnH6E7
|
| Obviously today this is done with gigantic machines, and
| the cost/kg is incredibly low to the point that locals do
| not pay for salt, but back before the advent of
| Caterpillar, I imagine harvesting salt this way was very
| labor intensive.
|
| There is a documentary on Amazon called My Name is Salt
| about the salt harvest in India. It is quite good.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Well, if you go back long enough when you could use a
| larger area for a given output of salt, then - once you
| prepared your pan once, you could just let the water
| evaporate completely, and then scratch the salt of the
| surface. If your pan can be made of rocks than that
| should probably be even easier.
|
| Other than needing some decent sunlight and not super-
| high humidity - what am I getting wrong?
| debacle wrote:
| The massive amount of human labor involved?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Depends on the source - the Khewra salt mines in Pakistani
| Punjab's Salt Range are the source of a lot of "Himalayan"
| salt in America.
| Filligree wrote:
| That requires vast quantities of space and a hot/dry
| climate to be done efficiently.
|
| It certainly was done. Looking back at history, the places
| that could efficiently do so were major salt exporters;
| which rendered it uneconomical to do elsewhere.
| orangepurple wrote:
| UK has insufficient solar radiation and heat accumulation to
| properly dry saltwater
| jkeddo wrote:
| And it is even more important today! Imagine unsalted database
| passwords ;)
| JoBrad wrote:
| This is why we need so much extra salt in our diets.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| Salt is particularly important if you're exercising--it's the
| main electrolyte lost through sweat--and is thus probably
| especially important in a society heavily dependent on manual
| labor.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17640343
| ElectronShak wrote:
| Just realised i've never seen an ad for salt...
| hammock wrote:
| The Morton girl?
| Aardwolf wrote:
| > But, if you stick a vegetable in salt water, a different class
| of bacteria breaks it down into stuff that we can eat. The "bad"
| bacteria that live in the air can't grow in the salt water,
| whereas the "good" can.
|
| Any clue why the bacteria that can survive the salt happens to be
| a "good" one? What has stopped "bad" bacteria that can survive
| the salt too from evolving?
| elhudy wrote:
| I think the question you are asking is "why can lactic acid
| bacteria survive in a saline environment whereas some harmful
| bacteria types cannot?"
|
| I believe the answer is that "bad" bacteria CAN oftentimes
| survive in environments with high-salinity [1], but struggle to
| compete with lactic-acid bacteria (i.e. "good" bacteria - LAB)
| in the presence of both a saline environment as well as a high
| ph environment. LAB also engage in antimicrobial activities
| within your gut [2] likely using bacteriocins as the mechanism.
|
| Salt generally inhibits fungal growth though.
|
| [1] https://academic.oup.com/femsle/article/243/2/373/495985
|
| [2]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15374659/
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Howdy HN, while this is on page #1 I figure I should "strike
| while the iron is hot" and talk about the book club service that
| I recently launched on https://bookworm.club [1]. Long story
| short, instead of a traditional book club, where you get together
| and vote on what book to read next (or don't have any say in what
| the next book is) I wanted to build a service that would
| automagically match you with other people around the world who
| also happen to be reading the same book as you. I think it has
| the potential for some very interesting conversation and
| connection making! The way it works is you just tell us what
| you're reading (or let us track your _currently reading_ list on
| Goodreads) and we match you up with anyone else also reading that
| and help you organize a meeting to discuss the book. Feedback
| welcome. And sorry if anything on the site breaks... I 'm a
| technical writer by trade, not an engineer. Although I consider
| myself fairly technical this is probably one of the biggest
| technical projects I've created to date. An eye-opening
| experience! I have a little more information about the book club
| service at [3].
|
| [1] As you can tell from the history of the site, I originally
| wrote the salt post in 2018 and then didn't do anything for a few
| years. I recently quit my job and took a 1-year sabbatical (which
| will probably end up being only 9 months) [2] and finally
| invested the time/energy to build the book club service I had
| been kicking around all this time. The blog is my place to
| discuss interesting ideas from whatever books I'm reading (such
| as this fascinating "resulting" idea [4] I learned from _Thinking
| In Bets_ ). If you would like to contribute to the blog I am open
| to that possibility (just dig around on the site or my personal
| site to figure out how to contact me).
|
| [2]: https://kayce.basqu.es/sabbatical/prologue
|
| [3]: https://bookworm.club/about/
|
| [4]: https://bookworm.club/blog/resulting/
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I signed up!
|
| I only see how to add books to my account or to connect
| GoodReads (which I don't use).
|
| How can I see what other people are reading or if I have any
| matches? I don't even see anything like "zero matches"...
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Thank you for signing up. In the spirit of MVP I am doing the
| matching manually now. If the service takes off I will
| automate that. I understand what you're saying about the need
| for UI around whether or not there are any matches.
| woile wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, this fits me really well, I'm gonna give it
| a try.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Your support is much appreciated!
| dang wrote:
| You should post this as a Show HN. See
| https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html and
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22336638. It's also good
| to follow the advice we give to YC startups about how to launch
| on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/yli.html. The logistical
| aspects only apply to YC startups, but the communication parts
| apply to anybody who wants to get attention for their startup
| or project on HN.
|
| Since the submission today has been on the front page, you
| should wait at least a few weeks before doing this, to let the
| hivemind caches clear. Follow-up posts shouldn't come too
| quickly or else they start having an anti-curiosity effect (htt
| ps://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).
|
| If you want to send a draft to hn@ycombinator.com, I can help
| you edit it. The same offer goes for anybody. However: be aware
| that the inbox is brutal, my worst case latency is shit, and so
| you may end up having to wait a long time!
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Thanks dang, I'll go for it.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Cool idea, I'll check it out! I've been looking for an online
| book club that indulges my more esoteric tastes (the last books
| I read were was a biography of a private mercenary, a sci-fi
| book, and now a book on the functioning of government) that I
| wouldn't get from a more traditional book club!
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Yeah that's exactly my issue too. My interests are all over
| the board and I don't want to hound my friends into reading a
| book about a mercenary (to use your example). I just want to
| talk with other people who already find that topic
| interesting.
| kazinator wrote:
| The word "salary" has roots in salt, as well as "sauce".
|
| Children in Slovakia all know a fairy tale called _Sol nad zlato_
| ( "Salt over Gold", translated as The Salt Prince) written by
| Pavol Dobsinsky likely sometime in the late 1800's.
|
| It was made into a film in 1983 which became somewhat known
| internationally.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salt_Prince
|
| In the story, the king gets offended in relation to salt, and
| bans it. Everyone in the land, as well as their livestock, gets
| sick in addition to having to deal with bland food and losing
| appetite.
|
| From one full text on the web: _" Pomaly odpadla ludom vsetka
| chut do jedenia. Len uz tej soli aspon ako marny mak si kazdy
| ziadal na jazyk. Este aj statok trpel. Kravy a ovce prestali
| dojit, pretoze nemali soli. Ludia chodili ako omameni a upadali
| do chorob. Kral a jeho dcery vyzerali uz len ako tone."_
|
| "Gradually, the people shed all their appetite. Everyonec craved
| even just a tiny smidgeon of salt on their tongues. Even the
| livestock suffered. Cows and sheep ceased to yield milk for lack
| of salt. People walked about as if drugged, and fell into
| illnesses. The king himself and his daughters looked but like
| shadows."
| sweezyjeezy wrote:
| > The word "salary" has roots in salt, as well as "sauce".
|
| Same as the expression "(not) worth one's salt". Roman soldiers
| used to get paid in salt instead of money a lot of the time.
| jandrese wrote:
| This reads a bit like those old filmstrips where some character
| gets annoyed at a common object like springs and then wishes
| them away, only for some supernatural cartoon character to
| grant their wish and show how the world would fall apart
| without that corporations product.
|
| Basically long form marketing for your product.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Lampooned in The Simpsons, as the children are watching a
| classroom video from the Zinc industry:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1iCZpFMYd0
| jimmyed wrote:
| Wow, the British sure were really petty.
| sfink wrote:
| Petty? I could see "cruel", or "clever", or strategic in their
| subjugation of other populations. It was a calculated tactic,
| not a petty one.
|
| Here in the US, we mostly slaughtered the natives and forced
| the survivors into reservations rather than coming up with
| clever ways of controlling them. Is our way or the British way
| more petty?
| lovecg wrote:
| I'm curious what were the dietary sources of salt say earlier
| than 10 thousand years ago. There's the argument that goes
| "people never ate salt in modern quantities so evolutionary
| speaking this is a new shock to the system". Do we actually
| _need_ all the extra salt we're consuming nowadays? Is it
| good/neutral/bad for us?
| obiwan14 wrote:
| There were and there are plant sources of salt, just as with
| sugar.
|
| > Do we actually _need_ all the extra salt we're consuming
| nowadays?
|
| Nyet! I almost got a heart attack after eating a way too salty
| jambalaya my roommate brought back from a party.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| People live up to 90 nowadays. We're keeping people alive far
| longer than "evolutionary nature" ever intended.
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| They were primarily animal sources of salt. Once agriculture
| developed, it became necessary to supplement that missing salt.
| From what I can find, that number is about 1/2 to 1/3 of what
| modern people eat.
|
| That's not to say that's a good thing, sodium intake is a
| U-shaped curve. Too little is as bad as too much. Here [1,
| check figure 1] is a study comparing heart disease, stroke,
| etc. vs sodium excretion (as a proxy for sodium intake). The
| standard dietary recommendation is 2300mg, which is well below
| the minimum point in the graph.
|
| And the 'high sodium diet' (3400mg) of average person is also
| below it, most people should probably be eating more salt,
| especially if they are sweating more from exercise or live in a
| hot climate.
|
| [1]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1105553
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _And the 'high sodium diet' (3400mg) of average person is
| also below it, most people should probably be eating more
| salt,_
|
| That's a very dangerous advice to give loosely based on one
| paper and against the advice of about all health
| organisations worldwide...
| nradov wrote:
| If you dig deeper into the research behind most of the
| nutritional advice promulgated by health organizations
| you'll find that it doesn't actually meet modern evidence-
| based medicine criteria. And there's no reliable proof that
| publishing such advice has ever produced better public
| health outcomes.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _Do we actually _need_ all the extra salt we're consuming
| nowadays? Is it good /neutral/bad for us?_
|
| Of course we don't need it, and too much salt is indeed bad for
| us [1] [2] (hence all the campaigns about eating less salty).
|
| According to the references I've quickly found, for instance,
| an American consumes on average 3,400mg of sodium per day when
| the body needs _less_ than 500mg (obviously this may be higher
| if you sweat a lot for some reason).
|
| [1] https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-education-resources-
| mater...
|
| [2] https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-
| eating/eat-s...
| nradov wrote:
| Those links are rather misleading and don't appear to account
| for the latest research.
|
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6.
| ..
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| In relation to the commenter I was replying to the key is
| how much is actually _needed_. If you have more specific
| information on this that 'd be great.
|
| Your point seems only about how much really is too much and
| the article you linked to is suggesting that the WHO
| recommendation is very conservative. However, I'm not
| really clear why you think any of my previous comment or
| references were misleading: I don't think it is under
| debate that we do not need all the sodium we eat and that
| too much of it is indeed bad for health.
| WalterSear wrote:
| > _Sodium intake was associated with cardiovascular
| disease and strokes only in communities where mean intake
| was greater than 5 g /day. A strategy of sodium reduction
| in these communities and countries but not in others
| might be appropriate._
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Hence my previous comment you're 'replying' to: It's only
| arguing about how much sodium becomes really bad, which
| is at best peripheral to the what was discussed. What's
| your point?
| nradov wrote:
| How much you "need" varies tremendously based on body
| weight, genetics, climate, and activity. A roofer working
| outside in the Louisiana summer will need way more salt
| than a sedentary office worker in Oregon. Most people who
| are metabolically healthy and sufficiently hydrated can
| maintain a proper sodium balance with no negative health
| impacts even if they consume a little extra salt. But
| some fraction of the population will suffer hypertension
| and other conditions; this is usually a symptom of deeper
| underlying physiological problems.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _what were the dietary sources of salt say earlier than 10
| thousand years ago._
|
| For inland communities, meat and salt licks. For coastal
| communities, seawater.
|
| > _There's the argument that goes "people never ate salt in
| modern quantities so evolutionary speaking this is a new shock
| to the system"._
|
| These arguments are indistinguishable from those suffering from
| the naturalistic fallacy [1] (EDIT: appeal to nature). One can
| construct an argument in its form for and against virtually any
| behavior, depending on what evidence one considers ( _e.g._
| which populations one samples), assumptions one makes
| (interpolating the archaeological evidence) and how far back
| one looks (early civilization, early humans, early hominids,
| _et cetera_ ).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
| thethirdone wrote:
| Arguing that our current lifestyle is not what evolution
| optimized for is not a fallacy. There is no "ought" or "good"
| in the original quote.
|
| Many of the modern differences in environment from earlier
| humans would be considered "good" by most people. Extra salt
| is probably "bad" in most cases, but it is definitely
| different.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _our current lifestyle is not what evolution optimized
| for_
|
| It's not. But neither is a senior person living healthily
| and happily into their late years something evolution
| considered. We're trying our biology in ways evolution
| doesn't care for, aiming for goals it never considered.
|
| Rhetorically, I can construct arguments for (coastal
| communities being historically healthy and consuming more
| salt) and against (ancient civilizations were chronically
| salt starved) modern salt consumption with this form of
| argument. There are too many degrees of freedom amidst
| sparse evidence in a diverse, heterogenous archaeological
| record.
|
| > _modern differences in environment from earlier humans
| would be considered "good" by most people_
|
| Those people tend to consider the nutrient-rich versions of
| plants we've bred for millennia while disregarding the
| toxins, pathogens and general wear-and-tear a Paleolithic
| human would have been subjected to.
| glenstein wrote:
| Are you sure that's what the naturalistic fallacy is? I've
| always understood the naturalistic fallacy to be that, for
| some things, it was fallacious to try and break them down
| into simpler parts. This idea is often invoked in the context
| of academic moral philosophy.
|
| So far as I can tell, it seems like you are talking about
| something closer to "appeal to nature", and your own link
| even has a line urging people not to confuse one for the
| other.
|
| >The naturalistic fallacy should not be confused with the
| appeal to nature fallacy, which is exemplified by forms of
| reasoning such as "Something is natural; therefore, it is
| morally acceptable" or "This property is unnatural;
| therefore, this property is undesirable."
| hinkley wrote:
| I think we can also safely assume that if proteins from
| salmon can be found up to 200 miles inland from their
| spawning grounds, that the salt and calcium from those fish
| also makes the same journey.
| hinkley wrote:
| I think the only first world people having any issues with salt
| consumption are folks trying to live entirely off the land, and
| vegetarian leaning. While looking for other things, I've found
| a couple of videos talking about what plants bioaccumulate salt
| and how to extract it. I think it depends on whether the plant
| is otherwise poisonous. If it's edible then clearly making
| broth out of it would be the most productive option.
|
| Many of our biggest civilizations have access to the ocean or
| river deltas. They would have had access to salt. From what I
| understand, predators get their entire salt intake from the
| animals they eat (blood, in particular?), and when we ate the
| entire animal that probably would have worked for us as well.
|
| If you're trying to get salt from plants it's because you don't
| or won't have other options. There was a time that discovering
| salt deposits within your kingdom had huge political
| implications.
| melolife wrote:
| It's actually relatively easy to be sodium deficient if you
| are physically active (as you shed sodium via sweat) and
| don't eat processed foods regardless of whether or not you
| are vegetarian. In my case the only significant source of
| sodium other than the salt shaker is cheese.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| ocean fish?
| cpach wrote:
| I think so too. And oysters, shellfish, etc.
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