Why is there not as much salt in salt than there should be?

Question

I was packing a bag of fine sea salt today, and noticed that on the Nutritional Information that there was 38.7g of salt per 100g. How?

In: 0

Answer 1

Sodium and Salt aren’t the same thing, although the majority of our sodium intake comes from salt.

Salt as we refer to it is Sodium Chloride. One atom of Sodium with one atom of Chlorine, which means that pure salt is only 50% sodium.

With sea salt, there are also other minerals that come along with the salt itself. Any naturally occuring, non-refined salt will have extra stuff with it. Magnesium, calcium, iodine…there’s a lot of other minerals that like to hang out with sodium chloride. It is also why sea salt is popular for cooking, the extra minerals can contribute to the taste.