How much salt do you have stored away?

a reply to: Advantage

You have a PM.

But that is a good link.

If your prepping, you need iodized salt as well as sea salt/pink salt.

I would also remind you to pick up livestock salt. It can be had for 6$/50lb sack with or without trace minerals.

It will be needed for salting hides as well as salt curing meats. For this you would want the salt without minerals.

I would stick up on both personally.

Also is a damn fine bait for just about any creature on land.

Many uses, and goes fast. If you store in buckets make sure to use oxygen eaters/dessicant packs.

And never store any food items in garbage bags, as they are lined with insecticides.

Not a lot. But I'm not a full-blown "prepper". Most of the salt I have on hand is just a result of me putting salt on everything and not liking to run out of salt. So I buy it whenever I can find it for a good price.

But I have probably five containers of the cheapest cheap salt you can buy. I prefer the pink salt for my food. I don't really think there's anything special about pink salt or it's any better for you but it is more effective at making things taste salty IMO. I don't spend more than I have to for it though.

We have three two pound boxes of pickling salt in stock, and a box of kosher salt too. Plus we usually have about four pounds of Sea salt we get from the coop regularly. Salt may go hard, but it can't grow bacteria or fungus. I usually get the sea salt on a regular basis, about two pounds a month or so. I have a problem where I pee out too much salt or I sweat it out. I have always had that problem but it used to regulate to keep it more stable in the right range years ago than it does now so now I have to eat a little more on things or I lose power and my BP drops way too much when I am standing or sleeping.

So, for me salt is essential more than it is for others. I know what sodium and chloride do in the body and am not afraid of salt at all, but my wife does not have the genetics I have so I add any extra I need after we cook. I stay away from sodium enriched foods where chloride is not present, I like the taste of the chloride more than the sodium.

I could boost up our reserves of sea salt, at a buck a pound, I could buy twenty pounds and put in another container of salt in stock I suppose, simply because I need more than ninety five percent of people do.

Only about five percent of those who are restricting salt actually need to restrict salt, but remember sugars cause the kidneys to retain salt more so if you eat a lot of sugar, you could get high levels. I have reactive hypoglycemia so do not like eating much sugars. I learned that overindulging can lead to the shakes or a light head or spinning head. So, depending on your diet, salt could be a problem for many. And if you eat little salt, then eat something salty, it can raise your blood pressure pretty high as the osmolytic action draws water out of your cells and floods your system. So, beware of increasing salt or going wild on salty things if you usually do not eat much.

originally posted by: Notoneofyou
If your prepping, you need iodized salt as well as sea salt/pink salt.

No offense, but you do not need iodized salt.

You need iodine.

Look up Lugol's iodine solution.

$40 of it will last you a lifetime...

And you can skip the "yellow prussiate of soda" that is in all iodized salts and most sea salts....

That anti-caking agent that has been used forever but has yet to be run through the FDA.

And you don't tan a skin with salt... you tan it with brains.

Although I agree with you about salt blocks being a perfect bait.

Try the Salt blocks or Salt with Minerals block for horses.
Portable and tastes really good.
Have used it many times out camping or when its Tequila Shot time and I'm at the horse barn

We have 250 thousand tons of salt where i work, how much you need?

originally posted by: Lumenari
a reply to: liejunkie01

Look for Kosher or pickling salt.

Moving it wasn't an issue in my case because I am set up to bug-in...

In spades.

As for the taste, it will all be the same to you a few months into the zombie apocalypse.

ETA... iodized salt or any other salt that isn't 100% sodium chloride can really screw up something you are trying to can or preserve.

So no caking agents, no iodine.etc.

Just want to second this and also......I've seen a few posts about ice melt salt, lol just don't....people don't realize some of those ice melt salts have some nasty other ingredients, and usually says "not meant for consumption" somewhere on it.

a reply to: Lumenari

No offense taken, I should have explained my statement more.

I know you don't tan hides with salt, but to coat them until you can tan them.

And I use the brain for tanning as well, not a fan of chemicals.

And your spot on about the iodine, which is what I was intending to say.

Another good source of iodine and water is sphagnum moss. You can squeeze the water directly out of it and drink it without issue.

Anyways, thanks for making sense of my post, I've been pretty braindead lately due to migraines.

a reply to: liejunkie01

Enough to keep witches out of my house for about 6 months. :p

I have wondered about halite salt used for melting ice and snow. I know the Detroit salt mines are used for that, but they did produce salt for human consumption at one time. It's mined from the ground from deposits that were once ancient seas, so I'd think it would be less contaminated by pollution than modern sea salt. It may have minerals that leached into it after being buried underground. But other than mined from the ground or concentrated from ocean water, salt is hard to come by in nature.

I usually have a couple of pounds of pickling or kosher salt around to make pickled stuff I never get around to. The Morton salt mine is not too far northwest of me, so I may be able to get bulk salt from there (I need to check that out). I could probably go up there after the SHTF and talk to whoever is in charge, likely find piles of it around the mine.

ETA: Livestock salt and block salt for wildlife sounds good too, thanks guys.

If a man was "worth his salt" that means he earned his pay - which was salt.

a reply to: liejunkie01

a reply to: Lumenari

You can soak black walnut hulls in a bucket of water for a natural tanning solution. You can also stain woodwork that way as well. Or just use freshly removed green hulls. The meat itself can also be used to touch up nicks and scratches.

Saving the first changes of water when soaking out the tannins from acorns as well, although a much weaker solution even after concentration from evaporation.

a reply to: Ahabstar

After removing the tannins from those acorns, dry em, morter and pestal into a flour....

great pancakes

a reply to: BlueJacket

Yep. The whole reason to fool with acorns. That and acorn flour is way easier to gather and produce than wheat (or other grass seed) flour.

Get yourselves a 40# bag of potassium chloride. The mitochondria works not just with sodium, but also potassium. Search engine "sodium-potassium pump". Go to the water softener section of the store and pick up a bag.

WARNING: Too much potassium will kill you. Too little potassium will kill you! Same for sodium. 4 grams of potassium and 2 grams of sodium per day spread out over the entire day. Nearly all foods have quite a bit of potassium already so be very, very careful. Don't guess yourself into an ER visit.

You can buy all of the salt you need at your local farm and ranch supply. You can buy plain salt, or you can buy sulfurized salt, or even salt with trace minerals, You can buy all of this in block form as supplement for farm animals / cows.

a reply to: tkwasny

You can get all the potassium you need from strawberries or tomatoes. Ground cherries, which are a wild tomato, are quite common in the eastern US.

a reply to: liejunkie01

I would advise not storing anything that can be ruined by water in bulk.
Buy a 50lb bag sure but separate it into smaller bags. that way if anything happens only some of your salt will get ruined.

After reading everyone's input, I have decided to get a variety of salts to store away.

This is what I acquired this weekend:

50 pounds of food grade sodium chloride.
5 pounds of pink Himalayan salt
3.5 pounds of coarse sea salt

With the added 3 pounds of table salt, that gives me a little over 60 pounds of salt for use and storage.

Not a bad start.