Salt is one of the most important ingredients ever discovered. It’s uses are so wide and extremely significant that even historic wars and battles have been fought for it. Salt has a wide use when it comes to food preparation. Salt not only gives food flavoring, providing a much-needed flavor to what otherwise would be bland food, provides nutritional benefits, but it also is used for food preservation.

Salt is absolutely indispensable, but there’s something we should all know about salt. Most of the time, the salt that we are using is unhealthy and we don’t even know it. Another thing that we don’t know is that there is a pure salt that we can replace the not-so-healthy salt that we’re using everyday. Let’s weigh in on the three kinds:

1. Table Salt or Sodium Chloride – This is the most common type of salt that we see in the kitchen and it comes in coarse or very fine form. Some countries still use the coarser version of table salt, but in the US, coarse table salt has been done away, replacing it with the finest grains of salt. Most often this kind of salt is one that has to be bleached and stripped of minerals. We can see from here that the table salt has some very bad “cons” to it, as the salt undergoes too much processing for it to be called natural or organic, or at the very least ‘healthy’.

Sodium Chloride is harmful to the body as it introduces toxins that the body will have trouble expelling. It is a well known fact that pure Sodium Chloride causes dehydration. It occurs when the body tries to extract water from cells as a way to recuperate the damage the toxins from the salt have wrecked havoc on. Some have countered that table salt isn’t pure Sodium Chloride. To a length, it is right, but the fact remains that table salt is around 98% Sodium Chloride and just around 2% of good minerals like iodine.

2. Sea Salt – Commonly known as the healthier, organic alternative to processed table salt. But a closer look under a high-powered microscope would reveal that sea salt has irregular structures that separates the minerals. The body will have very little to gain as the minerals in the isolated structure is something that’s not easy to absorb.

When it comes to harvesting sea salt, there are additional issues. The seas have become more polluted; the oceans have been exposed to all kinds of things, such as human-produced garbage, and to even more deadly chemicals like factory wastes, oil sludge, mercury, dioxins and all other pollutants that harm us. A huge amount of the toxins are being absorbed in the salt, which makes the sea salts in the market today not a very good alternative to table salt.

3. Himalayan Salt – A relatively new discovery has led experts to believe that this might just be the only toxin-free salt in the world. Though it’s something new for most of us, it has been around for 250 million years. It is produced by the earth and it has been found to be one of the purely natural food item in the world and is entirely toxin-free and full of minerals that have been lost in other salt forms.

Compared to the Sea Salt, the crystalline structure in the Himalayan Salt has a more abundant mineral content – 84 mineral elements to be exact. Additionally is has a structure that is easily absorbed by the body unlike sea salt. Himalayan salt can come in a solid form or in granulated form. Gourmet chefs who use Himalayan salt use blocks of the salt formed into bowls and pots and cook directly from it. In everyday use, a finely grained Himalayan salt is more appropriate.

The only con of Himalayan Salt is its price. It’s not something you can easily find in the market as the salt source itself is very limited. This precious salt is mined from the government-controlled land of the Himalayan Mountains. However, there are many great websites on the internet where you can purchase Himalayan salt as a good price if you’re looking to live healthier.

When it comes to health, our diets are one of the main things that we focus on, but sometimes we think we’re eating right when we are actually eating badly. There have been a countless number of studies that have led us to question the seemingly healthy food we’re eating. In these studies, gluten has come up time and time again as problematic for certain individuals. Who would have thought that eating normal wheat-based cereals or a slice of rye bread could be dangerous to people unaware that gluten can have an adverse effect on them.

First things first: what is Gluten?

Gluten is the protein part of wheat, rye, barley, and other related grains. Gluten is very common among grain food produce. Gluten became infamous when several clinical studies and findings revealed that there are people who somehow, are “intolerant” to gluten-filled food products. These people generally have a problem digesting gluten, especially when gluten is processed in the small intestines.

People with Celiac Disease
The intolerance to gluten is widely known in the medical world as a gluten-sensitive enteropathy (GSE) – a more popular term for it would be “Celiac Disease”. According to Wikipedia, in the United States alone, the cases of celiac disease are between 0.5% – 1.0%. For those who are diagnosed with this kind of condition, doctors have found out through examination that the patient’s gut surface and the lining around the small intestines are severely damaged due to an abnormal immune reaction to partially digested gliadin, present in gluten foods.

With an injured gut and small intestines, the person is likely to experience pain in the stomach close to abdominal cramps. Some may experience severe diarrhea after eating gluten food and are likely to experience the feeling of both bloating and apparent weight loss. People with celiac disease are often found out to have mineral deficiencies or malabsorption of nutrients.

How To Incorporate a Gluten-Free Diet
The good news is that the damage to the gut and small intestines can be reversed by eliminating food with gluten in ones diet. This way, the adverse reaction to the gluten will stop and it gives the body a chance to heal.

The more challenging aspect of adapting a gluten-free diet is finding out what kind of grain, cereal, bread, etc, have gluten and don’t! Grains are a staple on most people’s diets and you just can’t do away with all of them entirely. Gluten can even be found in meds and other tablets/pills that use gluten as a binding agent. It also can be in your cosmetic products like lipsticks, balms and toothpaste.

Other examples of food with gluten are those that contain wheat, barley, rye, made with graham flour, durham, spelt, and kasha. What you can eat are amaranth, quinoa, corn, rice, soy, buckwheat and oats, but do be careful as there might be wheat mixed in inside the package.

It’s more difficult to find the kind of food source that are gluten-free, as it’s often always in a special category or in a special aisle in a specialty food store. Some people suffering from celiac disease may even eat food with gluten in it and they don’t have any idea the damage that it can cause. Doctors often advise their patients to regulate their diet strictly, and do it for a long period of time, possibly even the patient’s whole life. If you’re suffering from celiac, it is quite limiting and frustrating.

One great resource to find gluten free foods is www.Zeer.com. They offer a subscription service that provides their members with detailed information on the gluten content on over 115,000 grocery items. For a monthly fee of $14.95, members of the Zeer website are allowed to instantly check the gluten status on over 30,000 food products, with over 500 products added or updated weekly. Each product is either assigned a “gluten free” or “contains gluten” rating.