Salt Rocks!

Salt Rocks!

Take It with a Grain of Salt If your friends told you to eat rocks, would you? Perhaps you would take what they say with a grain of salt. This means that you should not trust that everything you hear is true. When you eat salt, you actually are eating a rock. Well, it's a mineral, to be more exact. It comes in little crystals. Hey, my name is Crystal, too! It may surprise you to learn just how important this little white mineral can be. Well, you're about to read a whole book on it.

First of all, there is salt in your body right now. In fact, without salt you would die! People and animals need salt to live. Your body uses salt to make your muscles move and to help your blood flow. Salt also helps you make good use of the food you eat and controls the water inside you. It even keeps your heart beating. If you have too little salt in you, you may feel tired or dizzy. But putting too much salt inside you can make you sick. Over many years, too much salt can make your heart and other parts of your body weak.

Many foods already have a lot of salt in them. But sometimes people add more salt for seasoning. Salt is not known as a spice because it does not come from a plant. But salt and spices both add flavor to food. Sodium is another word for salt. One little spoonful of salt has as much sodium as your body needs for a whole day. The label on a food or drink package tells you how much sodium it has. If there is a lot of salt, there will be a lot of sodium. A lot of people try to eat foods low in sodium. They know that too much of it can be harmful. You may have seen foods marked low in sodium.

Don't Rub Salt in the Wound Salt can do much more than make food taste better. A common use is to keep food from spoiling. Long ago, there were no refrigerators or cans to keep food fresh. So people put salt on meat and soaked vegetables in salt water. It helped them preserve the food so they could eat it later. But be aware! Salt is not a magic tool. Once a food spoils, salt will not make it safe to eat again.

Would you put salt in your milk? Probably not. People once tried to keep milk from going bad by adding salt to it. Yuck! This did not work very well. Fortunately, we have discovered many other uses for salt.