Salt is salt?

[ChrisGreaves]

I grew up knowing that table salt (used liberally in a Lancashire diet in the Goldfields) was Sodium Chloride – NaCl – and that was salt.
In high-school chemistry classes we learned that table salt was/had sometimes a bit of Magnesium Chloride in there too, and Iodized salt obviously had something added to it; But still and all it was a tart substance that we could taste. We learned that there were salts – combinations of other atoms with metals, mainly, but Salt was Salt, and if you sweated, dogs liked to lick the saltiness of your arms, and Salt went pretty well with chips (French Fries) and so on.
We had salt lakes around us, and we knew that that salt was, well salty; no problem there. Later on the farmers found salt patches in the wheat paddocks; I suspect that these are formed from an excess of super-phosphate fertilizer – NaHPO4 if I got it right after 50+ years.
Now the cooking sections of the newspaper are loaded with flavoured salts – which I suspect is just salt with, say, a dash of curry powder or pepper ground in – but what of all the other salts peddled by the supermarkets?
** Sea Salt
** Kosher Salt
** Rock Salt
What, in plain dietary terms, is the difference? Are all these salts essentially NaCl but crystallized to a greater or lesser extent?

[HansV]

They're all NaCl with traces of other stuff:

Sea salt = sea water from which the water has been evaporated. Depending on where the sea water was collected, it may contain traces of algae, chemical pollutants, etc.
Sea salt can consist of coarse crystals or be almost powdery.

Kosher salt is not particularly kosher; it is coarse-grained salt used in making meat kosher according to Jewish food laws. (An alternative name is koshering salt).

Rock salt is ancient sea salt covered over millions of years by other layers of rock etc.

There is some difference in the 'mouth feel' of these salts, mostly because of the difference in size of the crystals, but otherwise there is no real difference.

[ChrisGreaves]

They're all NaCl with traces of other stuff:

Thanks, Hans; that's what i thought.
The original salt lakes in W.Australia must be chock-a-block with weird biological stuff, all the way from algae to dead birds.
Goderich is the local source of rock salt here.

[Claude]

Lake Eyre in northern South Australia is normally just a vast salt plane, however, at the moment, it is filling with water again for the 3rd time in less than ten years. Because Lake Eyre is the lowest point in Australia (15 meters below sea level) any water in there can never flow into the sea, the only way out is to evaporate. So, that salt water has become more and more concentrated, it is not possible to swim in it as it would burn our skin.

OTOH, salt is the only natural resource of Switzerland.

But yes, I agree with Hans, it is mainly Sodium Chloride.

[ChrisGreaves]

... is not possible to swim in it as it would burn our skin.

And not just from the chemicals.
I remember the only time our (Lancashire UK) parents turned us loose to find water on a salt lake. Liz and I stripped off our socks and sandals (but not in that order) and ran out onto the salt crust, plunged through the salt crust up to our ankles in steaming hot mud. Ran screaming back to the car ...

[John Gray]

Sounds like you had a traumatic childhood, which goes some way to explain why you are now residing in Canada!

[Rudi]

Jolie is also Salt (BTW)

[Claude]

Jolie is also Salt (BTW)

So was Lot's wife !

[ChrisGreaves]

Sounds like you had a traumatic childhood, which goes some way to explain why you are now residing in Canada!

Well, yes. being taken to the West Australian Goldfields for your tenth birthday is a bit of a shock to a nice well-behaved Lancashire lad ...