(CNN) – Sea salt is showing up in kitchens throughout the U.S., but are there any advantages to using this instead of the table salt most of us know?
“Sea salt and table salt are basically different in the taste, texture and the processing. Their health differences are not that different,” said Dr. Sharon Bergquist with Emory School of Medicine.
They both contain comparable amounts of sodium. Sea salt comes from the evaporation of sea water. It looks like little crystals and contains some natural minerals stripped out of table salt.
“On the flip side table salt contains more iodine because since the 1920’s we’ve been putting iodine into table salt to avoid iodine deficiency, goiter or thyroid problems,” said Bergquist.
But eating a healthy diet will provide all the nutrients you might otherwise be missing by choosing one salt over the other.
So the type of salt you reach for really comes down to personal preference.
“Because those small amounts of minerals do change the flavoring slightly as well as the color slightly so a lot of gourmet chefs actually prefer the sea salt,” Bergquist said.
