The salt you buy at the grocery store isn't really salt. It's just salt-flavored chemicals.

No one has ever told you what happens between the source and your table. Until now.

There’s a product you’ve been using your whole life, every single day, at every meal.
A product so normalized that you don't even think about it.
A product you think you know.

And yet, what you have in that white shaker on your kitchen counter has little to do with the salt humans have consumed for millennia.

What you actually have is an industrially processed, bleached, and washed product loaded with additives that no self-respecting chef would willingly put in their food.

This isn't fear-mongering. It's right there on the label. You just need to know how to read it.

What they do to salt before it reaches your kitchen

 

Industrial salt goes through a refining process designed for one thing only: to look perfect, be cheap to produce, and last for years without clumping.

To achieve that, it requires heavy processing.

First, the washing.

Mass-extracted salt is washed with water to remove impurities, but in that process, it also loses most of the naturally occurring minerals it carries: magnesium, potassium, calcium, and trace elements. What's left is basically pure sodium chloride.

Then, the bleaching.

That stark white color you see in most grocery store salts isn't natural. In its raw form, salt has brown, gray, pink, or yellowish tones depending on its origin. That flawless white is achieved using bleaching agents that no artisanal process would ever use.

Finally, the anti-caking agents.

Because refined salt has lost its natural minerals (which act as moisture regulators), it tends to clump together. The industrial solution? Add additives like potassium ferrocyanide (E-536), calcium carbonate (E-170), or silicon dioxide (E-551). They are legal. They are approved. But they are still in there.

The next time you grab your grocery store salt, turn the shaker around and read the ingredients.
If it has more than one line, you know exactly what you're buying.

The problem with not knowing what you're eating

This isn't about dieting or obsessing over salt.
The World Health Organization recommends staying under 5 grams of salt per day. And we unknowingly consume the vast majority of that amount through processed foods: bread, deli meats, cheese, canned goods, and sauces.

The salt you actually add at home is just a fraction of the total in comparison.

But that's exactly why—if you're going to add salt, shouldn't it be the best one you can find?
A salt that doesn't need additives to exist?
A salt that actually tastes like something?

Here's where the story changes.

There was a way to make salt before all this

Before the food industry, before the additives, and before salt became just another grocery store commodity, there was another way.

A way that had worked for centuries.

In northern Navarre, Spain, at an altitude of over 2,300 feet, there is a saltwater spring that flows from a fossilized inland sea that is 220 million years old. A sea that existed before the dinosaurs, trapped inside solid rock beneath the Pyrenees mountains.

Master salt makers have harvested this spring for generations. The process has barely changed: the water rises to the surface, gets distributed across hundreds of evaporation pools, and the sun and wind do the rest. No rushing. No chemicals. No bleach.

What's left is real salt.

What's so different about an unwashed salt?

When salt isn't washed, it keeps its complete mineral profile: the exact same trace elements the spring water has carried dissolved for millions of years.

When it isn't bleached, it retains its natural tones: that imperfect look which is actually a mark of authenticity.

When it doesn't contain anti-caking agents, it's for one very simple reason: it doesn't need them. The natural mineral complexity of spring salt makes it stable all on its own.

And when it isn't subjected to high industrial temperatures, it maintains a crystalline structure that releases flavor differently on the palate. Chefs who try it for the first time always say the exact same thing: you use less, but the food tastes like more.

That's not marketing. It's basic chemistry that no one ever told you about.

The test you can do at home this week

If you have two different salts at home, you can test it for yourself.

Put a grain of each on your fingertip and let it dissolve slowly. Refined salt hits you with a sharp, direct punch of sodium, and then quickly disappears. Untreated spring salt releases its flavor more slowly, with subtle nuances, and the aftertaste lingers for a few extra seconds.

You don't have to be a chef to notice the difference.

And once you notice it, it's hard to go back.

What the label tells you (and what it doesn't)

The law requires companies to declare additives. It doesn't require them to tell you the salt was washed, that it lost its minerals in the process, or that getting that perfect white required chemical intervention.

That's why what's not on a label sometimes speaks louder than what is.

At Sal Ancestral, our label is incredibly short because our ingredients are minimal: spring salt. Nothing else.
Not because we're hiding anything. But because there's nothing to hide.

One last thing before you get on with your day

We're not saying industrial salt is dangerous. The approved additive levels are legal and regulated.

We're saying that an alternative exists—one that doesn't need any of those additives. One that comes from a specific place, with a real history behind it, crafted by real people practicing a trade that has almost vanished.

And that tastes way better.

The next time you reach for the salt, you can just do what you always do.
Or you can stop and ask yourself what's really in that shaker.