Episode 194 Salt Part 1: The Seasoning

By adminSeason 8

Have you ever thrown a pinch of spilled salt over your left shoulder? Or said to someone “well, take his opinion with a grain of salt”? Or looked up the potential salary of a job listing? Salt is so deeply embedded in our cultures, our languages, our history as a species that we often take its influence for granted. We may forget (or perhaps we never knew) how much history is held within the unassuming yet ubiquitous salt shaker. In the first installment of this two-parter on everyone’s favorite seasoning, we delve deep into some salt lore. When did humans start to ramp up their salt intake? Why was salt such a big deal? Which places are named for salt? When did we start worrying about how much sodium we were eating? Tune in for a fun, fact-filled episode that’ll forever change the way you think about salt.

History
Kurlansky, Mark. Salt. Random House, 2011.
MacGregor, Graham A., and Hugh Edward De Wardener. Salt, diet and health. Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Alderman, Michael H. “Salt, blood pressure, and human health.” Hypertension 36.5 (2000): 890-893.
Aviv, Abraham. “Salt and hypertension: the debate that begs the bigger question.” Archives of internal medicine 161.4 (2001): 507-510.
Bakris, George L., and Michael A. Weber. “Overview of the evolution of hypertension: from ancient Chinese emperors to today.” Hypertension 81.4 (2024): 717-726.
Bayer, Ronald, David Merritt Johns, and Sandro Galea. “Salt and public health: contested science and the challenge of evidence-based decision making.” Health Affairs 31.12 (2012): 2738-2746.
Bloch, M. R. “Salt in human history.” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 1.4 (1976): 336-352.
Cirillo, Massimo, et al. “A history of salt.” American journal of nephrology 14.4-6 (1994): 426-431.
DiNicolantonio, James J., and James H. O’Keefe. “The history of the salt wars.” The American journal of medicine 130.9 (2017): 1011-1014.
Durack, Edel, Mercedes Alonso-Gomez, and Martin G. Wilkinson. “Salt: a review of its role in food science and public health.” Current Nutrition & Food Science 4.4 (2008): 290-297.
Grollman, Arthur. “The role of salt in health and disease∗.” The American journal of cardiology 8.4 (1961): 593-601.
Kaiser, J. “Data access. Industry groups petition for data on salt and hypertension.” Science (New York, NY) 300.5624 (2003): 1350-1350.
Perry, I. J. “Salt, science and politics.” Journal of human hypertension 17.1 (2003): 1-3.
Pickering, Thomas G. “The history and politics of salt.” The Journal of Clinical Hypertension 4.3 (2007): 226.
Ritz, Eberhard. “The history of salt—aspects of interest to the nephrologist.” Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation 11.6 (1996): 969-975.

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2 thoughts on “Episode 194 Salt Part 1: The Seasoning”

  1. I was so excited to see that there was a new episode but there doesn’t seem to be an audio component…is this an oversight?

  2. Hi, you seemed to miss my favorite weird fact about salt, at least in the 1st Salt episode. Salt is the rock we eat. It’s the only mineral commonly used as food. Nothing else on your plate came from a mine.
    I’m liking the podcast. Thanks!

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