Are there different kinds of salts?

Salts are an entire group of compounds. There are lots of different ones.

Like…?

Calcium chloride, Sea salt, etc

Bath salts

Potassium chloride.

Well, you guys are making my point! Calcium Chloride is a salt made of calcium and chlorine. Potassium chloride salt is made of potassium and chlorine. Neither of those two contain sodium!

All bath salts (as I just learned, thanks @Michael_Huntington) are made with sodium and another compound. Sea salt, of course, is just NaCl.

My point is, why do people use the word “sodium” when referring to salt? By itself, sodium is NOT a salt of any kind. It’s a metal.

A salt is any of a class of chemical compounds formed by neutralization of an acid by a base, a reaction in which hydrogen atoms of the acid are replaced by cations supplied by the base. Source

List of organic salts

You are confusing the chemical definition of a salt with the common use of the term “salt”. And I’ve never heard salt referred to as “sodium”. If I hear sodium, I think of a substance that reacts violently with water.

Nice @syz. Interesting read about MSG’s.—- They’re not dangerous at all!

I think Fluther swallowed Kardamom…

If you are referring to edible salts (used for cooking) there are all sorts of different kinds.

In the U.S. plain old table salt usually has iodine added to it, which was added back in the early 1900’s to help prevent people from getting goiters. Then there is sea salt, which is pretty self explanatory.

I’ve taken the liberty to post some info from Melinda Lee (my favorite radio cooking host) about Kosher salt. This particular excerpt was from an article about brining turkey:

Kosher salt is the ONLY type of salt to be used in making brine (it is sweeter and more pure than ordinary table salt). Kosher salt is available in two varieties. The most common is flaked salt (example: Morton Kosher Salt) which has been pressed into flakes by rollers. The other type is a four-sided crystal (example: Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt). The crystal-shaped salt measures differently because of its shape. Use about 25% (one quarter) MORE crystal salt than flaked salt when measuring for brine or other recipes. The formula is: 1 tablespoon of regular table salt is equivalent to 1½ tablespoons flaked kosher salt, or 2 tablespoons, diamond crystal kosher salt.

Then there are all sorts of salts that come from different parts of the globe that may be slightly colored by the minerals that are scooped up along with the salt, giving them slight variations of flavor. You can check out This Site to read more about the different types of edible salts and where to use them.

I don’t know anything about the metal aspect of salts though, just that some are edible and some are not and some types of salt work/taste better than others for particular dishes. Happy cooking!

Actually, @Kardamom more than anything I was wondering why people use the word “Sodium” when referring to salt, but I didn’t word the question right because I didn’t know then what I know now! Else I would have straight up asked that.

Sodium, Na on the periodic table IS a metal.

People call it “sodium” when referring to sodium chloride in a dietary sense because most people are only concerned about the level of sodium itself in food and in the body. They don’t care about the chlorine.

@DominicX There is exactly one atom of sodium and one atom of chlorine in table salt. Further, if people thought about it, you’d think they’d be more worried about the chlorine (even if it was for no reason) don’t you think? I mean, it’s a bleach! A powerful one at that!

There is a little evidence that reducing sodium chloride in the diet can help reduce high blood pressure. Salts that taste the same to us like potassium chloride don’t seem to have the same effect. So people who are trying to reduce the salt in their diet usually mean sodium chloride and would probably talk about reducing sodium intake

That’s what I’m saying @Stinley…they don’t even know what sodium IS.

…and they use the term “calories” when they actually mean “kilo-calories.”
The Japanese and most Europeans have figure this out already.

Why do we mean kilo-calories @worriedguy?

Yes. A salt is a compound which is the result of a reaction between an acid and an alkali. Most of them are not edible. I think people just refer to table salt as sodium because it’s shorter to say than sodium chloride.

“Salt” is shorter still. I don’t think the average person is aware that they are ingesting chlorine as well.

Chlorine is unstable, which is why it reacts fairly violently as a bleach but as once it forms a chloride in a salt it is a very stable compound. The two compounds of bleach and chlorine are very different and have different properties. They’re not the same. Salt doesn’t turn into bleach inside us or anything as it is stable.

calories used to be an imperial measurement but they got standardised (and the amounts changed) and are now a metric measure called kilocalories or kcal. People still use calories because its the old word that they were used to before and still appears in the new word

@Stinley People keep saying how bad the sodium is for you…but when you combine sodium with chlorine you get a whole different animal with completely different properties than sodium or chlorine have…..unless the compounds in salt break down to their individual elements. And either they do, or they don’t. If they don’t we’re not ingesting sodium any more than we’re ingesting chlorine. .... Right? I mean, you can’t say you’re ingesting sodium but not ingesting chlorine. Do you see what I’m saying?

I think so but it is a turn of phrase rather than an accurate chemical name. The sodium bit is the bit that’s ‘bad’ for you in the salt we eat, because you can have salts made from other metals like potassium which are not ‘bad’ for us. I suppose it’s a bit of shorthand speech.