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Re:The Difference Between European and American Butter by mandmandam on Saturday April 29, 2023 @03:42AM (#35750920)
> Pink salt is a fad/marketing thing, exactly as margarine was…

Only if you believe microplastics are harmless (you really shouldn't).

Sea salt consistently has far more plastic in it than rock salt. If I'm reading this study [0] right, it's about 10x more microplastics than rock salt, which makes sense if you think about it.

0 - https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b04180

Re:The Difference Between European and American Butter by kergonath on Saturday April 29, 2023 @04:35AM (#35751184)
> If I'm reading this study [0] right, it's about 10x more microplastics than rock salt, which makes sense if you think about it.

Yes, it does make sense, but that’s because micro plastics are everywhere we bother to look. In the air, in the water, in the fish, in animals, etc. However, that is no evidence that the micro plastics we get from salt are significant in any way compared to other sources, particularly considering how little of the stuff we actually eat. From an ecological point of view, getting it from the sea is much better than ripping mountains apart to extract it.

Re:The Difference Between European and American Butter by gattilorenz on Saturday April 29, 2023 @03:57AM (#35751000)
Even though I don’t care for micro plastics (e.g. I don’t look into it), I also buy (perfectly white) rock salt by chance. They dig it up 10 km from here, not on the Himalaya.
Re:The Difference Between European and American Butter by brokenkebaby on Saturday April 29, 2023 @06:31AM (#35751676)
It looks like you are equating pink salt, and mined salt. Mined salt usually colored in white-gray spectrum.
Re:The Difference Between European and American Butter by Qem on Saturday April 29, 2023 @09:50AM (#35752840)
Given the inorganic nature of sea salt, I believe it should be feasible to remove most microplastics from it, by applying intense heat briefly, in an oxygen atmosphere, so the microplastic particles would just burn away.