Provident Principles and Practices: 10/18/08

Provident Principles and Practices
© David Edwards, 2008

PRINCIPLES: “You may also want to add other items to your longer-term storage such as sugar, nonfat dry milk, salt, baking soda, and cooking oil.” – www.providentliving.org

PRACTICES: Salt – sodium chloride (NaCl) – is an important long-term storage item. Three to five lbs/person/yr are needed for flavoring food. More salt may be needed for other purposes.

Salt as a Condiment. Salt brings out flavors in food. Processed foods generally contain a great deal of salt, and little additional salt is needed. On the other hand, most long-term storage foods contain almost no salt. Without added salt, most of these foods would taste very bland. Salt may be needed for flavoring stored foods in a long-term disaster in which processed food is of limited supply.

Electrolyte Replacement. Salt is needed to replace sodium chloride lost through bleeding, perspiration and crying. Without processed foods, people need a way to add salt to their diets.

Effects on Health and Lifespan. Some people, such as those who are overweight or who have high blood pressure, need to limit how much salt they add to their food. But, for most people, the amount of salt that they consume, as long as it is greater than that which is minimally needed, seems to have little impact on health or lifespan. In a disaster, salt solutions can provide soothing and therapeutic eye washes, mouth rinses, and throat gargles. Salt can also be used in intravenous solutions.

Salting and Pickling. Salting is one way to preserve certain foods. Most microbes cannot live in a highly salty environment. Meats and fish can be cured by salting. Pickles and sauerkraut are created by soaking cucumbers and cabbage, respectively, in salt solutions under appropriate conditions.

Oral Rehydration Solution. Certain gastrointestinal diseases cause extreme loss of electrolytes from the body due to repeated diarrhea and vomiting. Untreated, this may lead to severe illness or death. An ORS solution, consisting of 4 cups of water, ½ tsp salt, ½ tsp baking soda, 8 tsp sugar, and ¼ tsp salt substitute, sipped every few minutes, can restore electrolytes and preserve life. A little mashed banana or orange juice, if available, can be exchanged for ¼ tsp salt substitute to provide potassium.

Iodine. Iodide in iodized salt can help prevent retardation in infants and thyroid problems in others.

Industrial Processes. Salt is essential in many useful industrial and commercial processes. In a time to come when “we will live on what we produce”, salt may have significant value in production.

Other Uses. Salt is needed in MSR MIOX water purifiers to generate microbe-killing compounds. At 15-32 degrees F, salt can deice walkways for safety, as it depresses water’s freezing point.

For more, see http://providentliving.org/content/display/0,11666,7531-1-4062-1,00.html; www.springerlink.com/content/1032k6374735085u/fulltext.pdf; www.cmaj.ca/cgi/data/160/9/DC1/5; www.mja.com.au/public/issues/feb15/salt/nicholls.html; www.emedicine.com/MED/topic1187.htm; www.saltinstitute.org/37.html; www.saltinstitute.org/images/salt_uses.jpg; www.pamf.org/patients/ors.html; http://rehydrate.org/ors/index.html