By Elissa Elan
Nation's Restaurant News
WASHINGTON (May 11, 2009) The Center for Science in the Public Interest renewed its call on the restaurant industry to lower sodium levels in its food, saying that a recent study of 102 meals from 17 chains found that 85 of the dishes contained more than a day's worth of the recommended amount of sodium.
According to CSPI's study, the worst offenders in sodium levels were Red Lobster’s Admiral’s Feast with Caesar salad, lobster-topped mashed potatoes and a cheddar bay biscuit, 7,106 milligrams; Chili’s Buffalo Chicken Fajitas with tortillas, condiments and a soft drink at 6,916 milligrams; Chili’s Honey-Chipotle Ribs with mashed potatoes with gravy, seasonal vegetables and a soft drink, 6,440 milligrams; Olive Garden’s Tour of Italy lasagna with a breadstick and salad and dressing, 6,176 milligrams; and Olive Garden’s Chicken Parmigiana with breadstick, salad and dressing, 5,735 milligrams.
The government recommends that adults limit their daily intake of sodium to 2,300 milligrams, and that seniors and children consume no more than 1,500 milligrams a day.
CSPI criticized many of the restaurants in its study, saying that excessive intake of salt over one’s lifetime can present an increased risk of high blood pressure, stroke and heart disease.
“Who knows how many Americans have been pushed prematurely into their graves thanks to sodium levels like those found in Olive Garden, Chili’s and Red Lobster?” asked CSPI executive director Michael Jacobson. “These chains are sabotaging the food supply. They should cut back and give consumers the freedom to decide for themselves how much salt they want.”
Scott Vinson, vice president of government relations for the National Council of Chain Restaurants, disputed the CSPI's comment. “Chain restaurants offer a wide variety of menu choices to their guests to satisfy a broad range of customer tastes and dietary needs," he said.
Officials of the National Restaurant Association also expressed disappointment at the CSPI’s claims, saying, “The restaurant industry has been making tremendous strides on the topic of sodium and other issues related to healthy cuisine, and we are pursuing a wide range of efforts to respond to customers’ interest in nutrition information and healthier options."
On Tuesday, the CSPI's Jacobson is expected to testify before the Senate Finance Committee that reducing sodium consumption by 25 percent over the next 10 years could save the federal government $9 billion a year in direct medical costs.
In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the city's health department recently launched a campaign to reduce the amount of salt used in restaurant and prepared foods by 25 percent over the next five years and by 50 percent over the next decade.
Aroma Thyme Bistro Comments:We feel salt is an essential ingredient to great cooking and great health. Yes we said great health. At
Aroma Thyme Bistro,
Ellenville NY, we only serve Himalayan Crystal Salt™.
Here is the full fact sheet on this salt:
What is Himalayan Crystal Salt?
When we speak of Himalayan Crystal Salt™, we are referring to only one specific crystal salt, “The Original®”, coming from one specific location in Pakistan and has been the subject of comprehensive medical research as featured in the book Water&Salt - The Essence of Life, by Dr. Barbara Hendel, MD and Peter Ferreira. Original Himalayan Crystal Salt™ is more than sodium and chloride. Original Himalayan Crystal Salt can actually be viewed as food. When we speak of salt, and as we scrutinize its properties, we mean salt in its original form: holistic, wholesome, unaltered, natural salt, as it has crystallized in the Earth over millions of years.
Original Himalayan Crystal Salt contains all the elements of which the human body is comprised. From the periodic table of elements we are familiar with 94 natural elements (stable as well as unstable). Apart from inert gases, all of these elements (84) can be found in crystal salt. Hence, crystal salt contains all natural minerals and trace elements that are found in the human body.
Are All Crystal Salts The Same?
Frankly, we don’t know. We can only talk with confidence about the scientific findings and inherent supreme bio-energetic qualities of The Original Himalayan Crystal Salt™ brand and the positive effects that our salt has been scientifically proven to have on the human body. No other salts, coming from any other sources, can make any claims as to the bio-energetic properties of their salts or the effects on the human body functions without the research data to verify their claims. Although other brands of crystal salts are available, we cannot speak about them as nothing is known about them in any definitive way.
The Meaning of the Word Salt
The word salt comes from the Latin term sal, which again comes from the word sol. Sol is synonymous with the “sole,” the water and salt solution and is the Latin word for sun. Mythologically, and from its definition, sole means “liquid sunlight,” the liquid materialization of the sun’s energy, liquid light energy, bound into a geometrical structure, capable of creating and sustaining life. This literally explains where life on Earth came from: from the sole of the primal oceans.
The Celtic word for salt, “hall” has the same roots as the German word heilig meaning “holy” which also comes from the word heil meaning “whole,” Further, hall also signifies sound (German schall). The schall is a sound with a long hall, which means echo or reverberation in German, involving vibration. If we knew of these correlations today, we would be asking our neighbor at the table to “Please pass me some vibration,” rather than “Please pass me some salt.” We have to ask, “Were the Celts conscious of the fact that salt contained all the frequency patterns of the elements?” And, that “hall” was the basic vibration for “heil” (German “health”)/ “wholesomeness”? They definitely knew how to cure illnesses and rebalance the energy deficit in the body through “hall,” their salt. From an energetic, as well as from the biophysical point of view, an energy deficit can be balanced with salt, regardless of the missing frequency pattern, or the missing information/energy/life-force. Pure crystal salt is still geologically defined as “halite,” in which we can recognize the Celtic words “hall” for salt and “lit” for light. Loosely translated, crystal salt or halite means, light vibration.
Natural Himalayan crystal salt consists not only of two, but also of all natural elements. These are identical to the elements of which our bodies have been built and originally found existing in the “primal ocean” from where all life originated. Interesting enough, our blood is a sole, containing the same salty solution as that of the primal sea; that is, a fluid consisting of water and salt.
Salt — Mediator between Energy and Matter
Salt is that which remains after matter has dissolved and transformed into subtle matter. The founder of the Schüssler Salt Therapy, Dr. Wilhelm Schüssler, already proved, over 100 years ago, that the ashes remaining after a corpse is cremated are nothing but the salts of which the human body is made. The byproduct of the modern waste burning plants is salt. Needless to say, no one would want to eat this salt, but the fact remains, it is salt. Our prehistoric ancestors were already aware of the crucial necessity of salt. Wherever they found salt they guarded it like a treasure. Later in history, salt was called “white gold” and was the subject of political power plays, which oftentimes resulted in war. Roman soldiers were actually paid with salt, which is reflected in the word “salary.” Salt was more important for survival than gold. Throughout Europe, the salt routes over which the white gold was transported emerged. The names of many German cities bear testimony to this time, with such names as: Salzgitter, Salzburg or Bad Salzuflen for instance. Also, names including the word “hall,” the Celtic word for salt, emerged, with city names like Bad Reichenhall, Friedrichshall and Hallein, indicating salt deposits at these locations.
The Structure of Salt
Similar to water, salt has its individual crystalline structure. In contrast to the structure of water, which is tetrahedral in shape, the grid structure of salt is cubic in form. This cube is constructed from light quanta, also called photons, which are pure light energy. The light/heat energy of the sun evaporated the primal oceans more than 250 million years ago and the energy expended for this dehydration is stored in the platonic body of the salt’s crystalline grid as potential energy. By adding water, the force of the grid can be overcome, so that the energy it holds is liberated. In this process, the elements within the crystal salt are ionized, allowing them to penetrate the body’s cells. This creates an ocean of energy, a powerful potential, waiting only to create and sustain life.
The Power of Salt to Transform
From a scientific point of view, salt has a very unique property. In contrast to all other crystalline structures, the atomic structure of salt is not molecular, but electrical. This fact is what makes salt so transformable. When we submerge a quartz crystal into water and remove it after 10 minutes, it is still the same quartz crystal. It did not change molecularly, though it has a crystalline structure. Although the crystal can give its energy, its frequency pattern into the surrounding water, which is effortlessly absorbed, the quartz crystal remains the same. The crystal is too rooted in matter to be dissolved or disassociated from its polarity.
When we submerge a crystal of salt into water, it dissolves, and the sole is created. Sole is neither water nor salt. It is a higher energetic dimension than either the water or the salt alone. When the sole evaporates, the salt is left behind. This transformability of salt ensures that it does not have to be metabolized in our body. Starch is transformed into sugar, protein into amino acids and fat into glycerin and acid. But salt remains salt. It is directly available to the cells in its ionized form as sole (so-lay). All other foods must be separated into their components in order for the body to make use of them. But salt always remains in its original form. It even accesses our brain directly.
No Thoughts and No Actions Without Salt
Even the simplest processes in our body need salt or its inherent elements in ionized form. For example, it is the task of our nervous system to transmit the stimulation that has been recorded via sensory input to our brain, which in return passes this information back to our muscles in order for us to react to the respective stimuli. An electric potential occurs on the membrane wall of the cells when the positively charged potassium ions leave the cells and the positively charged sodium ions cannot enter due to their size. The outside becomes positively charged and the inside negatively charged. When a nerve cell is stimulated, its membrane suddenly becomes polar opposite and consequently is permeable for the sodium ions. In one-thousandth of a second (1/1000th), the electrical potential is transformed and releases, with every nerve impulse, 90 mill volts of energy. The received stimuli are now being converted into thoughts and actions. Without the elements potassium and sodium in the salt, this process is not possible. Not even a single thought is possible, let alone an action, without their presence. Just the simple act of drinking a glass of water requires millions of instructions that come as impulses. In the beginning there is the thought. This thought is nothing but an electromagnetic frequency. The salt is responsible for enabling this frequency to transmit commands to the muscles and organs.
The Conductivity of Salt
Most of us are familiar with experimenting with the conductivity of salt from science class. We attach two ends of an electric current to a light bulb and submerge it into a glass with distilled water. Because this water is not conductive, the bulb does not light up. But when we add a little bit of salt into the water, the bulb slowly starts to glow. It is the same with our body. When we lack the natural elements of the salt, we are suffering from a chronic loss, a chronic energy deficit, or deficit of information. Salt cannot be labeled as a medication, because that would imply that apples too were a medication. Salt is a core essential nutrient with exceptional abilities and qualities fundamental for keeping us alive. And we can find that which we are lacking, the respective frequency pattern, as well as the necessary bio-chemicals, in natural crystal salt.
White Gold to White Poison
As common as salt shakers are to our kitchens, so are the numbers of diseases associated with salt’s daily use. Life is not possible without salt. But our consumption of salt is killing us. Why is that? Because our regular table salt no longer has anything in common with the original crystal salt of which we’re talking about here. Salt nowadays is mainly sodium chloride and not salt. Natural crystal salt consists not only of two, but also of all natural elements. These are identical to the elements of which our bodies have been built and originally found existing in the “primal ocean” from where all life originated.Interesting enough, our blood is a sole, containing the same salty solution as that of the primal sea; that is, a fluid consisting of water and salt. It also has the same ratio of concentration as existed in the days when life left the primal sea. This sole flows through more than 56,000 miles of waterways and blood vessels throughout our organism with the forces of gravity and levity and regulates and balances the functions of our body.
How Salt Became Sodium Chloride
With the advent of industrial development, natural salt was “chemically cleaned” and reduced to the combination of sodium and chloride. Essential minerals and trace elements were removed as impurities. However, sodium chloride is an unnatural, isolated, unwholesome substance having nothing in common with salt. Similar to white, refined sugar, salt, once regarded as white gold, was converted into white poison. However, there is a higher reason for salt having been endowed with all the natural elements found in our bodies. Sodium chloride is an aggressive substance, which biochemically, is perpetually seeking an equalizing counterpart so that the body’s pH can always remain neutral. Sodium chloride needs its natural counterpart in order for it to produce its effect. The natural counterparts, such as potassium, calcium, magnesium and other minerals and trace elements, demonstrate, from a biophysical standpoint, specific frequency patterns. These patterns ensure the geometric structures in our body. When these structures are missing, we are without energy and are lifeless. Salt should not be used just to add flavor to our food, but for its vibration pattern, which is similar to our body!
How Table Salt Burdens the Body
While our body only requires the minute amount of 0.007 ounces of salt per day, most of us suffer from a lack of salt, even though we’re over-saturated with sodium chloride. When our consumption of salt is less than 0.007 ounces per day, salt craving kicks in. The average, per capita, daily consumption of table salt in the U.S. is between 0.4 ounces and 0.7 ounces. However, our body is only able to excrete 0.17 ounces to 0.25 ounces a day through our kidneys, depending on our age, constitution and sex. The body recognizes table salt as an aggressive cellular poison, an unnatural substance, and wants to eliminate it as quickly as possible in order to protect itself. This causes a constant overburden on our organs of excretion. In almost every preserved product, salt is used as part of the preservation process. So, by adding salt to the already-salted food, the body receives more salt than it can get rid of.
The body now tries to isolate the over-dose of salt. In this process, water molecules surround the sodium chloride in order to ionize it into sodium and chloride to neutralize it. For this process, the water is taken from our cells as the body sacrifices its most perfectly structured cell water in order to neutralize sodium chloride. With this, the dehydrated body cells die.
The Consequences of Consuming Table Salt
The result of consuming common table salt is the formation of overly acidic edema, or excess fluid in the body tissue, which is also the cause of cellulite. That’s why doctors tell us to avoid salt. For every .035 ounces of sodium chloride that cannot be eliminated, the body uses 23 times (23x) the amount of its own cell water to neutralize the salt. If the sodium chloride is still too high, re-crystallization of the table salt occurs as the body uses available non-degradable animal proteins (as those found in milk), which also have no value and cannot be broken down and eliminated. The body uses these proteins to produce uric acid in order to get rid of the excess salt. As the body cannot dispose of uric acid, it binds itself with the sodium chloride to form new crystals that are deposited directly in the bones and joints. This is the cause of different kinds of rheumatism such as arthritis, gout, and kidney and gall bladder stones. This re-crystallization is the body’s band-aid solution for the cells and organs in order to protect the body from irreparable damage of irresponsible food intake. But in the long run, it poisons the system because those substances cannot be disposed of.
The Difference Between Rock Salt and Crystal Salt
The elements in rock salt are not integrated into the salt’s crystal grid, but cling to the outside surface and crevices of the crystalline structure. This is the fundamental difference between rock salt and crystal salt. A salt crystal manifests a superior structure. Due to this sublime form, the elements are biochemically available for our cells as are the individual frequencies or vibration patterns. Rock salt is a cheap alternative to table salt, and is at least a natural and wholesome product. Biochemically and biophysically however, it is of little importance to our organism. We can only receive the resonant effects of the geometrical structure through the superior order or structure of a crystal and our cells can only absorb those elements that occur in an ional form. Only under considerable pressure considerable pressure can the elements be transformed into a specific size, making them ional, which enables them to pass through our cell wall. This is important because our cells can only absorb what is available organically or ionally. Therefore, we cannot absorb the minerals from mineral water as they’re not refined enough to penetrate our cell walls. And what doesn’t get into our cells cannot be metabolized. Therefore, the best calcium is useless if it cannot be available to the body’s cells. What we need is the organic, or ional state of an element, in perfect natural symbiosis with all its associated elements, in order for our organism to make any use of it.
Crystal Salt
Pure, natural crystal salt has been subjected to enormous pressure over millions of years. The pressure is responsible for creating the salt crystals. The higher the amount of pressure the more superior or excellent the state of order within the crystalline structure. Salt, for us, is foremost an information carrier and not a spice. For information to be absorbed into our cells, a crystalline structure is necessary. Chemically, a stone and a quartz crystal are both silicates. However, the vast difference in the amounts of pressure they were subjected to, distinguishes them. The quartz crystal embodies a perfect geometric form, a perfect state of order within its structure. The stone does not. Its elements are coarse, because it was not subjected to enough pressure to create a crystalline structure. Crystal salt layers wind through the mountain of salt, shimmering in transparent white, pinkish or reddish veins. Only with sufficient pressure was the salt of the salt mountain transformed into crystal salt.
The elements trapped within the crystal salt are in particles small enough to be able to penetrate the human cells and be metabolized.
The Healing Effect of Salt
For thousands of years salt has been known as a panacea. Alchemists called it “the fifth element”—besides water, earth, air and fire—because its qualities were comparable only to ether, the actual fifth element. Why are we so drawn to the ocean? Because our subconscious mind instinctively wants to return to the specific vibrational state of the ocean from which we once emerged. This is where we can return to recharge our batteries and regenerate. It was only two-hundred-fifty years ago, with the advent of industrialization, that we initiated our disconnection from nature and her ways. Fortunately, we are witnessing a trend to return back to natural, holistic methods for living and caring for our body, including a shift back to utilizing natural salts in this process. People everywhere are reconsidering the healing effects of natural crystal salt. We can find it in skin care lotions and for use as bath salts, and it is even used in inhalation or cleansing treatments for illnesses of the respiratory system and for a variety of other indications.
The Neutralizing Effect of Salt
The healing properties of salt are also known in allopathic medicine. The largest and oldest salt works in Europe occupies the royal salt mine of Wieliczka, Poland, just 7.5 miles outside of Krakow. Here, a hospital was carved out of the expansive salt mountain, seven hundred forty feet below the surface, specifically for asthmatics and patients with lung disease and allergies. Several thousand patients have been successfully treated in this hospital. The healing rate is astonishingly over 90%. Recognition of the healing effects of salt chambers has influenced the construction of a similar underground spa located in the salt mine of Berchtesgaden in Germany. The therapeutic benefits of long-term residency inside the healing salt chambers are allopathically acknowledged. The healing effects were originally thought to be related to the purity of the air within the mine’s chambers. But if it was only a question of the purity of the air, why was the air in the cave so healthy, and the air above-surface so unhealthy? One cause has been determined. Our houses are charged with electromagnetic devices, such as TVs, stereos, computers, microwave ovens and the basic electric currents running through our walls. And, when not at home, we hold cell phones to our ears while driving in our cars and walking through our daily lives. This electro-smog causes an excess of positively charged ions that disturb the balance between the positively and negatively charged particles. Further, it creates an excess positively charged, chemically unbound particles in the air. Only thirty seconds on a cell phone are enough to open up our blood-brain-barrier, a natural barrier that protects our brain from toxins, for eight hours. A Swedish study showed that ninety percent of the women who used a copper-T I.U.D. as their birth control method, while simultaneously using cell phones, developed uterine cancer; the cause being that the I.U.D. functioned as a transmitter and receiver of unnatural, dissonant vibrations.
Crystal Salt Promotes the Excretion of Animal Proteins
A further study showed some interesting allopathic results. All subjects in this study drank one-teaspoon of sole daily. After four weeks, the protein emission in the urine significantly increased for eighty percent of the one-hundred-twenty-three subjects. This shows that the energy pattern of the sole with its innate, natural antagonism towards the proteins, helps and supports the excretion of animal proteins that are difficult to break down. (This examination was done by Dr.Elisabeth Scherwitz-Josenhans MD.)
Drinking at least one glass of low-sodium vegetable juice daily may help overweight dieters lose more weight.
day, May 06, 2009 by: Barbara Minton, Natural Health Editor