A VOTE FOR THE TRADITIONAL CRYSTAL SALT

Salt has been used by mankind for ages to add taste and flavour to our food.It is essential to maintain the electrolyte balance in the blood and is a very essentialingredient that helps in the proper functioning of the body. Salt whenharvestedin the traditional way has minerals like Magnesium andCalcium that are essential for the body.

Many companies have promoted free-flow salt through the recent years to the extent that people believe salt is free-flowing by nature. Salt gets its free-flowing nature only because of the addition of anti-caking agents. Refining removes the Magnesium and Calcium from the salt and salt refineries add Iodine and also Silicon Dioxide (or similar anti-caking agent) to give it the free flowing nature.The human body’s daily requirement of Magnesium is about 500 mg. Earlier we used to get our entire requirements from food and water. Today because of the use of fertilisers plants attain rapid growth and contain less Magnesium and the consumption of bottled water that is processed by reverse osmosis is also depleted of Magnesium. As a result we are able to get only about 300mg of Magnesium against our daily requirement of 500mg. Magnesium deficiency can aggravate a wide range of diseases like Arteriosclerosis, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s etc. 

Many people avoid consuming Silicon Dioxide (or similar anti-caking agent)and therefore prefer to buy high quality crystal salt that is available in the market which doesn’t contain any anti-caking agent. There are only very few brands that sell high quality crystal salt like us. Our sales figures are promising and assure us of the acceptance of high quality crystal salt in the market. Many people are shifting back to crystal salt because of the additives used in free flow salt. We sell twice the amount of crystal salt than free flow salt because of our high quality standards in crystal salt.
As per the old PFA act and the present FSSAIact, thesale of salt for human consumption without Iodine is banned. Today a small percentage of the people living in the hill areas suffer from Goitre. Goitre is caused by insufficient Iodine or Iodine deficiency.  To overcome this problem faced by a fraction of the population the Govt has decided to force the entire population into consuming Iodised salt.

Let us look at the people who don’t require Iodine. A small fraction of the population suffer from Hyper Thyroid and Hashimotos. Doctors advice these people toavoid Iodine as consumption of iodine will further worsen their condition. For these people quality non-iodised salt is not available in the market. What is available is a substandard product which does not conform to any quality restrictions with astatement at the bottom of the pack “For preservative purpose only”.

Quality Crystal salt doesn’t have any visible impurities but the government enforces all the salt manufacturers to add iodine in the salt. Iodine has its advantages and disadvantages. The right of choice should belong to the consumer and the government should not force the addition of iodine in crystal salt.

For a Govt that is not able to ban cigarettes it is ironical for them to ban noniodised salt.It will be in everybody’s interest if the Govt says that non iodised saltis permissible in the market provided it is printed clearly in the packet that this packet does not contain Iodine. The choice of taking Iodised salt or non-Iodised salt should be with the consumer andnot enforced as it is being done today.