We all do, eat salt I mean, not suck it, unless you mean the licking we get from politicians and other smart men involved in football and other sundry money-making activities disguised as nation building.

Salt is critical for life and, because of its rarity up to some 50 years ago, was invested with an importance far exceeding that inherent in its natural properties.

Unlike other dietary items, the only way you get salt is by eating salt itself. Animals instinctively know this. It is said that most of the secondary roads and local roads in North America follow such a whimsical path that one could conclude that towns were placed and connected haphazardly without any scheme or design. This is because the roads are essentially widened footpaths and trails originally cut by animals in search of salt, (much like our own country roads were based on the colonial need to get produce from the estate to the port).

Animals and probably primitive man got their salt by finding natural salt in the earth and licking it.

A salt lick in northern New York state had a wide road made by buffalo and the town that grew up around that salt lick is today known as Buffalo.

Salzburg, the Austrian town, means “salt town” and most European cities were founded near to saltworks.

The first of the great Roman roads, the Via Salaria was built to bring salt to Rome. At times, Roman soldiers were paid in salt, which is the origin of the word “salary” and the expression, “worth his salt.” Salt was to the Romans what oil is to certain Americans and many of their conquests followed the trail of salt.

The Roman word for a man in love was salax, or in a salted state, from which we get salacious. They salted their greens so we got salad.

Perhaps the earliest record of man’s search for salt comes from a salt lake in prehistoric China, Lake Yuncheng, known for constant warfare and all the wars were for control of this lake. The Chinese were also the first to make salt by boiling sea water or later on, brine, in iron pans, in the province of Sichuan.

By 250 BC, they had began drilling the world’s first brine wells and, apart from salt, discovered an invisible substance coming out of the same wells which made people sick or sometimes caused enormous explosions. It was not until 1901 when oil was found in a Texas salt well, called Spindletop, that the mystery was solved. The Chinese had discovered a natural geological curiosity—salt, oil and gas are frequently found together.

Since then. salt has been taken from river deltas (the Nile); dried desert lake beds (the sebkhas of north Africa responsible for the growth and power of Timbutku); mountains (Cardona in Catolonia, Spain) and, of course, from innumerable salt ponds along the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic, the source of much of Venice’s power and from the Atlantic coast of France.

In addition, more salt lakes have been found in North America, The Great Salt Lake and in the Middle East, the Dead Sea, known to The Hebrews as Yam HaMelah, the Salt Sea.

In this area is also found another mountain of salt, Mount Sodom, of Sodom and Gomorrah fame. However the Caspian, in Russia, is the world’s largest salt lake, fortunately for lovers of salted sturgeons‚ eggs or caviar.

Salt is really a chemical term used for a substance produced by the reaction of an acid with a base. Acids are sour tasting. Bases feel soapy. Like yin and yang, acids like to bind to bases.

In common salt, the base is sodium and the acid is chloride. When they combine you get a staple food of animals, sodium chloride. It is the only rock eaten by humans and it is the one with the taste we call salty. 

Chloride is essential for digestion and respiration. Without sodium, which the body cannot manufacture, our hearts would not beat, our nerves would not work and our blood would not be able to transport nutrients or oxygen. In other words, we would be dead.

One level teaspoon contains approximately six grammes of salt. Humans contain about eight ounces or 250 grammes of salt. Because we lose salt or sodium chloride in sweat and in urine we need to take in at least three to four grammes a day.

That varies according to climate, culinary habits and occupation. Hot weather and heavy manual work increase salt requirements. That’s why saltfish became so popular with slave owners in the West Indies. Its present popularity has its origin in other biological needs.

Some 14,000 uses have been found for salt. It is used in manufacturing pharmaceuticals, melting ice on winter roads, fertilising agricultural fields and making soap. Before refrigeration, people preserved food with salt. Hence, saltfish (really cod); salt hams, of old time Christmas fame, salt butter, salt cabbage or sauerkraut, salted cucumbers or pickles and salted milk or cheese.

There are many stories about salt. To spill salt at the table is said to bring bad luck. Leonardo da Vinci’s famous “Last Supper” has a spilled saltcellar in front of Judas.

Salt was taxed heavily. One of the reasons for the French Revolution was the French salt tax, the gabelle. Later on, in India, Mahatma Gandhi led a march to the ocean in protest against the British law that forbade Indians from making their own salt. 

On April 6, 1930 at 8.30 am, Gandhi publicly violated British salt law by picking up a piece of salt crust in Dandi on the coast of the Gujarat peninsula and a movement was born that did not end until the British left of India.

Sucking an orange touched with a little salt is a time honoured Trini “child-ting” and I am told that adding a pinch of salt to cocoa, brings out the cocoa taste, wonderfully.