For centuries, the expression "salt of the earth" has been used as a catchall phrase to designate something good and essential. Nothing could be more erroneous. For that apparently harmless product you shake into your food every day can bury you. Consider these startling facts:

1. Salt is not a food. There is no more justification for its culinary use than there is for potassium chloride, calcium chloride, barium chloride of any other chemical on the druggist's shelf.

2. Salt cannot be digested, assimilated or utilized by the body. It has no nutritional value. In actuality, it is harmful and can cause or aggravate disease, especially in the case of kidney ailments.

3. Salt may act as a heart poison. It also increases the irritability of the nervous system, tends to aggravate epileptic conditions and lowers the bars against apoplexy.

4. Salt robs calcium from the body and attacks the mucous lining throughout the entire gastrointestinal tract.

If salt is so dangerous to our health, then why is it used so widely? Mainly because it is a habit that has become ingrained over thousands of years. Many people – including entire races of people – never eat salt and never miss it. Once a person is free of the habit, salt is as objectionable and repulsive to the taste as tobacco is to a nonsmoker.

How did the habit originate? The German biochemist and physiologist, Klaus Bunge, explains that in prehistoric times there was a proper balance of sodium and potassium salts in the earth, but continued rainfall over the centuries washed away the more soluble sodium salts. In time, all soils and land grown foods became deficient in sodium but high in potassium. The result was that animals and human beings developed a craving for something to replace the deficiency. They found a poor, ineffective and highly dangerous substitute in inorganic sodium chloride or common table salt.

Since salt is a chemical that is harmful to the digestive organs, we can understand why the stomach develops a sudden and abnormal thirst after salt is consumed. The stomach is simply reacting to a foreign substance and is taking quick action to wash it out of the body through the kidneys. Of all the body organs, the kidneys are the most subject to injury from salt. Salt eating, in fact, is known to pave the way for kidney disease.

Just as salt is harmful to the kidneys, so it is injurious to the heart. The action of the heart muscle is governed by the relative concentration and balance of sodium and calcium salts in the blood. An excess of sodium will therefore tend to disturb this action, increasing the heartbeat and blood pressure. In the same way, salt upsets the nervous system.

The decalcifying effect of salt has been noted by Egon Uhlmann, M.D., in his book Diets for Sinus Infections and Colds. He points out that it tends to rob the body of calcium by drowning calcium salts in thirst-quenching liquids and creating predisposition to acidosis. For this reason, Dr. Uhlmann forbids the use of salt by persons with colds and sinus conditions. Salt starts its attack by biting into the mucous membranes of the mouth and then spreading its irritation all along the gastrointestinal tract.

The body needs sodium chloride and plenty of it, but only when it is provided in organic form such as in celery, okra, sea vegetation or goat whey. Can this substance be utilized by living cells? Goat whey is the highest source of sodium available. It also contains other minerals making it a good overall organic, absorbable mineral supplement. If you crave salt, look to your diet. A poor diet is often deficient in sodium.

Have you ever made pickles? Cucumbers are kept in a brine (salt) solution that pulls the moisture out of the cucumber, thus making it taste crisp and salty. The same things happen when we eat salt. Moisture is pulled from our bodies. We are essentially pickling ourselves.

Another example of eating salt is to think of eating rocks. Can you digest them? Utilize them? Of course not you say, but scientist or chemist will argue that NaCl (sodium chloride) is NaCl as the molecular structure is the same. Using common sense and thousands of case histories, one finds there is a remarkable difference in how the body reacts to rocks verses plants in not only salt but other minerals and vitamins as well. Plant nutrients sustain us while nutrients in rock form or even synthetic form, in the end, will harm our bodies, inviting ill health into our lives.

Remember, sodium is essential to vital health, so take care to supplement your diet and take advantage of food sodium whenever you can.

Amie Mosley provides goat whey and nutritional supplements. She uses Iridology to help determine the nutrition your body needs. Call 561-3469; e-mail eyes@gci.net; or visit her web site http://home.gci.net/~eyes.