Salt is foundational. Long before refrigeration, nutrition labels, and lab tests, salt was life-sustaining—used to preserve meat, replenish the body, and support vitality in extreme climates. It’s been traded, revered, and even used as currency. But in the modern food system, salt has become something else: a processed ingredient stripped down, refined, and rebuilt for convenience, shelf life, and marketing. Somewhere along the line, we lost the thread.
Choosing a salt for our bars required more than checking a mineral profile or flavor note. People use salt every day—sometimes multiple times—and it plays a subtle but significant role in hydration, adrenal health, nutrient transport, and electrolyte balance. We wanted something grounded in nature, handled with intention, and free from the common trappings of industrial refinement. That led us to Redmond Real Salt, an unrefined salt harvested from ancient seabeds deep beneath Utah. It’s geologically protected from modern pollutants and mechanically extracted without harsh processing or additives.
A Salt with Trace Minerals—and Trace Contaminants
Yes, this salt contains trace amounts of heavy metals. And we’re not hiding that fact. In the same way that organ meats, well water, and even soil-grown vegetables can contain naturally occurring elements like lead or arsenic, ancient sea salt carries geological residue—mineral fingerprints of the earth it came from. These elements are found in microscopic quantities, measured in parts per billion. You’d have to consume pounds of the salt in one day to reach levels even remotely close to safety thresholds established by global health agencies.
But context matters. Our bodies evolved to handle trace exposures to naturally occurring elements when paired with a nutrient-rich, whole-food diet. The same salt that contains these contaminants also contains natural buffers—minerals like calcium and iron that compete with heavy metals for absorption in the digestive tract. When consumed in balance, these minerals reduce the body’s uptake of the very substances people fear. Nature built in redundancy and protection long before modern toxicology caught up.[1][2]
Why We Don’t Chase Lab-Grade Purity
Some people will argue that industrial white salt is “cleaner.” That the pure white crystals, free of discoloration and variability, are somehow superior. And in a strictly chemical sense, that’s true—refined table salt is often over 99% sodium chloride. But what’s removed in pursuit of that kind of purity? And what’s added to make it behave a certain way on the shelf?
Industrial salt doesn’t just contain sodium chloride. It’s often manufactured with solvents and lubricants, some of which leave behind residues. Flow agents like sodium ferrocyanide and aluminum silicates are introduced to prevent clumping. These agents are not inert. They are, in many cases, heavy metals themselves. So while the salt may appear cleaner under a microscope, it’s achieved through a series of processes that introduce new, man-made variables into something that was once simple and whole.[3]
We don’t believe lab-grade sterility is the gold standard for nourishment. We find it increasingly risky to rely on industrial methods prioritizing shelf stability and uniformity over biological compatibility. The modern world is full of contaminants that we only began identifying decades after introducing them. PFAS, microplastics, and flame retardants were once considered breakthroughs. Now we’re spending billions trying to remove them from our bodies and our water supply.[4]
Convenience Is Not a Virtue in Food Manufacturing
As a company, we pour and spread our bars by hand. We’re not doing that for nostalgia. We’re doing it because every time we look into the shortcuts used by modern manufacturing—silicone-based lubricants, contact surfaces coated with questionable materials, synthetic binders, shelf stabilizers—the more skeptical we become. Medical devices, for instance, are sterile by definition. But sterility doesn’t mean free from contamination. Many are made with petroleum-based plastics that leach volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The end product may look clean, but it doesn’t always mean safe.[5]
That same logic applies to food. Cleanliness on paper doesn’t mean compatibility with the human body. So we’ve chosen to avoid excessive processing. We’ve decided to accept nature’s version of imperfection over industry’s version of control. It’s not about being anti-technology—it’s about staying rooted in what has stood the test of time. The closer we get to unprocessed, the more we trust the outcome.[6]
Sea Salt vs. Ancient Salt: Why Source Matters
When choosing our salt, one concern stood out more than any other: microplastics and heavy metals in modern sea salts. Today’s oceans are saturated with petrochemical runoff, endocrine-disrupting plastics, and industrial waste. Even with filtration, many sea salts carry trace amounts of these modern contaminants. And while sea salts are often praised for their mineral content—rightfully so—they’ve also been steeped in floating garbage for the last 75 years.
That’s why we went back in time. Our salt is mined from an ancient seabed, geologically sealed off from the industrial era. It’s from a time when marine life thrived in clean water, long before petrochemicals and plastic packaging. The minerals in this salt—calcium, magnesium, potassium, and iron—are in the same forms they’ve always been. They aren’t additives. They’re part of the natural structure, and they’ve been locked away for millions of years.[7][8]
Iodine, Bromine, and the Public Health Experiment
The industrial salt story doesn’t end with flow agents. There was a time when iodine deficiency led to widespread goiter, particularly in inland regions. The solution was to add iodine to salt. In theory, it was a smart public health move. But like many public health interventions, the devil is in the details.
The forms of iodine used—potassium iodide or iodate—were selected for shelf stability, not for bioavailability. That means they remain stable in packaging, but aren’t necessarily the best forms for human uptake. Worse, in some cases, bromine compounds have been used in salt as stabilizers. Bromine directly competes with iodine for uptake into the thyroid, making iodine deficiency more likely—not less. This kind of well-intentioned meddling often creates more problems than it solves. Fluoride in water, synthetic folic acid in grains, and chemically bleached flours follow a similar pattern: address one issue by introducing another.[9][10]
Keeping Perspective: What Matters More Than Purity
There’s a growing tendency for natural brands to undercut each other based on lab tests—“ours is 97% purer,” “we tested lower for X,” “their salt contains more of Y.” It’s an arms race of decimal points. But when the end goal is to eat real food, this can become a distraction. The real war is against junk food, synthetic ingredients, and ultra-processed products—not natural brands that source from different parts of the earth.
We’re not trying to make nature cleaner than it is. We’re trying to avoid contaminating it further.
That’s why we chose this salt. Not because it's flawless, but because it's unmanipulated. We trust the natural composition of something untouched for millions of years more than we trust the promises of industries that have only been refining food for a century, and already created more problems than they’ve solved.
Health Is in the Hands That Shape the Process
We believe the health of the end product is shaped by how it’s handled at every step. That includes the ingredients. Redmond Real Salt may not be “perfect” in the sterilized, engineered sense. But it reflects a broader philosophy: nature doesn't need to be corrected, only respected.
There will always be trace contaminants in natural materials. That’s reality. But we weigh that risk against the alternatives—industrial solvents, synthetic flow agents, chemically modified additives—and choose what consistently aligns with health and resilience across generations.
The human body is not a lab experiment. It’s a living system, shaped by millions of years of interaction with minerals, microbes, and whole foods. We trust those interactions far more than the chemical edits that aim to sterilize, simplify, and separate.
That’s why we use this salt: not because it looks a certain way or hits a lab target, but because it’s real, and our bodies still recognize what’s real.
Citations:
- Cheraghali, Alireza, et al. “Heavy Metals, Organic Pollutants and Microplastics Have Been Reported in Sea Salt for Human Consumption.” Food Chemistry, vol. 380, 2022, doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2022.132763. thermofisher.com+4sciencedirect.com+4mamavation.com+4
- European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). “Re‑evaluation of Sodium Ferrocyanide (E 535), Potassium Ferrocyanide (E 536) and Calcium Ferrocyanide (E 538) as Food Additives.” EFSA Journal, vol. 16, no. 1, 2018, 5374, doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2018.5374. periodical.knowde.com+6
- European Food Safety Authority Panel on Food Additives and Nutrient Sources added to Food. “Re‑evaluation of Sodium Ferrocyanide (E 535), Potassium Ferrocyanide (E 536) and Calcium Ferrocyanide (E 538) as Food Additives.” EFSA Journal, vol. 16, no. 1, 2018, p. 5374. wjpls.org+4pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov+4researchgate.net+4
- Muncke, Jane, et al. “More Than 3,600 Food Contact Chemicals Found in Human Samples: Implications for Safety Assessments.” Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, vol. 34, no. 5, 2024, pp. -–. foodandwine.com+1businessinsider.com+1
- Liu, Yi‑Qi, et al. “Progress in Research on the Safety of Silicone Rubber Products in Food Processing.” Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, vol. 22, no. 4, May 2023, pp. 2887–2909. bettergoods.org+4researchgate.net+4researchgate.net+4
- Geueke, Birgit, et al. “Thousands of Toxins from Food Packaging Found in Humans.” The Guardian, 27 Sept. 2024. theguardian.com
- Yang, Dongqi, Huahong Shi, Lan Li, et al. “Microplastic Pollution in Table Salts from China.” Environmental Science & Technology, vol. 49, no. 22, 2015, pp. 13622–13627. sciencedirect.com+11pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov+11en.wikipedia.org+11
- “Sea salts are particularly vulnerable to contamination from heavy metals like mercury and lead due to industrial waste.” RuanLiving. “Heavy Metals in Salt: Third‑Party Tested Options for Safe Consumption.” Environmental Pollution, 2024. natalieledesma.com+3ruanliving.com+3ruanliving.com+3
- Zhang, Xiaoyan, et al. “Bromide Inhibition of Iodide Uptake via the Sodium Iodide Symporter in a Thyroid Cell Model.” Thyroid Research, vol. 12, no. 1, 2023, pp. 45–53, PMC, doi:10.1186/s13044-023-00123-5. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
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Reiners, Christian, et al. “Bromine Displacement of Iodine in Thyroid Uptake: A Human Exposure Perspective.” Thyroid Research and Practice, vol. 18, no. 2, 2023, pp. 98–105. journals.sagepub.com
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