A very much light hearted post meant to highlight some modern packaging slogans.

I purchased a table salt package from a local Gold Coast grocery store for our domestic style home salt grinder. The package was marked as natural rock salt in large capital letters on the front and underneath it states evaporated sea salt in smaller capital letters. While obviously that is possible, otherwise the government advertising officials might have taken action, some might have thought rock salt came from salt mines, thus the term rock, rather than evaporated sea salt. Just that I don't encounter many salt rocks in the local ocean beaches.

The package had a use by date of March 2023 and purchased in March 2021, suggesting the product was not usable after that date. That had me curious as I recall from my history books salted meat and fish etc was how certain foods were preserved and transported long distances in the sailing ship era. Also recall salted foods is how food was carried in early explorer stories.

The brand is Saxa although I suspect similar with other brands, without an extensive check.

This is an interesting kettle of fish. "Natural Sea Salt" is claimed to be used here and there, and to be superior to "ordinary salt". You only had to go to Geelong and see the evaporation ponds at the Cheetham Salt works, where seawater was admitted, evaporated, and the salt harvested. This was, according the the ad-men, "ordinary salt". Same stuff, different name, and people fall for it. It's sodium chloride, no matter how its obtained.

But, it gets better. Near where I live, the local shopping strip has one shop devoted to "organic" products ( a grave misuse of the word "organic" but I digress.) You've already guessed haven't you? Yes; it has "Organic Salt".

When the question is asked, up goes the cry, "It's natural!" I always have fun with the reply, "Yes; so are Arsenic, Opium, Cyanide, Nicotine, Cocaine - all naturally occurring."

It's marketing, it's interesting...

My son worked for a short time at a meat packaging place. They packaged bacon as "Organic" and charge 5 times the price as that not packaged as "Organic", except it all came from the same source...

Tell me, how can you have bacon that is NOT organic?

This is an interesting kettle of fish. "Natural Sea Salt" is claimed to be used here and there, and to be superior to "ordinary salt". You only had to go to Geelong and see the evaporation ponds at the Cheetham Salt works, where seawater was admitted, evaporated, and the salt harvested. This was, according the the ad-men, "ordinary salt". Same stuff, different name, and people fall for it. It's sodium chloride, no matter how its obtained.

Yes and no.

The different salts in sea water precipitate at different densities as the water evaporates. At each target density the move the remaining brine to another pond to target another salt.

For example they can selectively remove
sodium sulphate
sodium chloride
magnesium sulphate
magnesium chloride
as a starter

If I recall correctly Sodium chloride is one of the last to precipitate. I used to have Cheetham's IP pond density targets after a visit to their salt farm near Rocky, might be in my pile of stuff at home. Anyway you can simply look up precipitation densities for each salt.

Once the target low sodium chloride salt is piled up, they can then remove sodium chloride by spraying seawater over it as sodium chloride is the most soluble.

on the flip side the Chloro alkaline plants want more pure sodium chloride salt as the sulphates and non sodium metals cause problems in the electrolyzer for which the brine must be pretreated to remove.

So the overall answer, yes you can get table sea salt with much lower sodium content than normal sea salt.

I do like the concept of “organic “ salt. Sodium chloride, NaCl, is by definition inorganic - not a single carbon atom.

It's marketing, it's interesting...

My son worked for a short time at a meat packaging place. They packaged bacon as "Organic" and charge 5 times the price as that not packaged as "Organic", except it all came from the same source...

Tell me, how can you have bacon that is NOT organic?

I can upstage that one, at the Henley beach shopping center ( adelaide ) the butcher there had free range lamb and don't think I've laughed some much before,  the looks from some people that I was not believing it was priceless. I reckon someone was meant too write organic  the way things were looking it's a wonder they didn't have free range fish or organic free range fish.

BigShunter.

I enjoy 'fleur de sel'.

Rock salt is supposed to come from mines and allegedly (reporter buzzword) contains more varied minerals than sea salt. It would also have no iodine, which is added to sea salt.
Take them to the highest court in the land!

Rock salt is supposed to come from mines and allegedly (reporter buzzword) contains more varied minerals than sea salt. It would also have no iodine, which is added to sea salt.
Take them to the highest court in the land!

To be fair, Rock Salt is usually precipitated sea salt which means its concentrated salts that are usually much lower in sodium chloride, especially at the bottom.