Salt is essential to the health of both people and animals especially for food. Table salt, used universally as a seasoning, is fine-grained and of high purity. To ensure that this hygroscopic substance will remain free-flowing when exposed to the atmosphere, small quantities of sodium aluminosilicate, tricalcium phosphate, or magnesium silicate are added. Iodized salt, Livestock also require salt; it is often made available in solid blocks.
The meat-packing, sausage-making, fish-curing, and food-processing industries use salt as a preservative or seasoning or both. It is employed for curing and preserving hides and as a brine for refrigeration.
Salt is also employed in soap, glaze, and porcelain enamel manufacture and enters into metallurgical processes as a flux (a substance promoting fusing of metals).
When applied to snow or ice, salt lowers the melting point of the mixture. Thus, large amounts are used in northern climates to help rid thoroughfares of accumulated snow and ice. Salt is used in water-softening equipment that removes calcium and magnesium compounds from water.
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In some parts of the Western Hemisphere and in India, the use of salt was introduced by Europeans, but in parts of central Africa it is still a luxury available only to the rich for food. Where people live mainly on milk and raw or roasted meat (so that its natural salts are not lost), sodium chloride supplements are unnecessary; nomads with their flocks of sheep or herds of cattle, for example, never eat salt with their food. On the other hand, people who live mostly on cereal, vegetable, or boiled meat diets require supplements of salt.
The habitual use of salt is intimately connected with the advance from nomadic to agricultural life, a step in civilization that profoundly influenced the rituals and cults of almost all ancient nations. The gods were worshipped as the givers of the kindly fruits of the earth, and salt was usually included in sacrificial offerings consisting wholly or partly of cereal elements. Such offerings were prevalent among the Greeks and Romans and among a number of the Semitic peoples.
Salt contributes greatly to our knowledge of the ancient highways of commerce. One of the oldest roads in Italy is the Via Salaria (Salt Route) over which Roman salt from Ostia was carried into other parts of Italy. Herodotus tells of a caravan route that united the salt oases of the Libyan Desert. The ancient trade between the Aegean and the Black Sea coast of southern Russia was largely dependent on the salt pans (ponds for evaporating seawater to obtain salt) at the mouth of the Dnieper River and on the salt fish brought from this district.
Cakes of salt have been used as money in Ethiopia and elsewhere in Africa and in Tibet. In the Roman army an allowance of salt was made to officers and men; in imperial times, this salarium (from which the English word salary is derived) was converted into an allowance of money for salt.
China, the United States, India, Germany, Canada, and Australia are the world’s largest salt producers in the early 21st century.
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Source: Britanica
