Is Salt The Unsung Hero?

The unsung hero of our everyday life, known as 'white gold', or salt, causes camel trains to still make the 700-kilometre journey, across the unforgiving Sahara Desert, to the Timbuktu salt mines.

Current technology has turned salt into the mundane, at an unbelievable low price, even though it was once valued at its own weight in gold. Resembling many of the building blocks of civilization that we now take for granted, though it is hotly debated as a health issue.

Many health professionals proclaim salt should never be added to anything you consume, while others argue that to use it in small quantities is beneficial.

Our ancestors taught themselves to marinate their food with salt and save it for the long bitter winters and hot, bacteria-ridden summers.

rior to canning and refrigeration, storing foods with salt kept people from starving. Curing and brining food allowed sailors to survive on the ocean for long periods, which in turn led to longer and longer trips and more exotic discoveries.

Salt related foodstuff such as bacon, salt cod, ham, salmon, briny pickles and fish sauce are in high demand. Many command enormously high prices, particularly when you consider their humble beginnings.

Salt (NaCl) has a history of intrigue, human innovation and even violence. Salt has been involved in numerous wars, the establishment of trade routes and empire building. The Silk Road traversed over one of the largest salt-producing regions in the world.

Gandhi said: "Next to air and water, salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life." He picked salt to galvanize public support for change. The tyranny of excessive salt taxation was removed and became the momentum for India's civil rights movement.

For the traveler looking for that extra special experience, the landscapes that create salt are eerily beautiful: from the terraced salt pans of Peru, high-altitude salt lakes, below-sea-level salt flats, hypersaline coastal pans, to the deep crystal-encrusted caverns and mines.

Whether it's viewing the 3000 seat underground salt cathedral of Zipaquira, which has been formed out of a salt mountain, or the salt lakes of Argentina, America and Tunisia, or the Dead Sea in Israel, to joining a salt camel train in Africa, following the salt trail can create an extraordinary holiday.