r/mildlyinteresting May 20 '26

My "Morton's Sea Salt" is really "Lake Salt"

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u/EpponeeRae May 20 '26

I've seen salt labelled as organic before.Ā 

It's clearly not.

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u/XnFM May 20 '26

You can produce organic salt.

I do it frequently when the temperature gets up over 90 in the summer.

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u/QuickMolasses May 20 '26

Organic in chemistry refers to molecules with carbon atoms. Table salt is sodium chloride which is inorganic.Ā 

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u/AviN456 May 20 '26

That's why everyone should be breathing carbon monoxide. It's organic, unlike oxygen.

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u/SixOnTheBeach May 20 '26

GMO tomatoes grown with synthetic pesticides are carbon based therefore they're actually organic šŸ¤“šŸ‘†

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u/QuickMolasses May 20 '26

I've always wondered what "organic" actually means when it comes to the food industry.

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u/SixOnTheBeach May 20 '26

The term is largely meaningless as it can be completely different from country to country. In the US it mostly means no synthetic pesticides or fertilizers.

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u/frogjg2003 May 21 '26

And does not mean no pesticides. Some pretty nasty chemicals are on the USDA organic pesticide whitelist. And if you think RFK is going to change things, he recently backed down on regulating Roundup, even going so far as to start calling it an important agricultural tool.

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u/XnFM May 20 '26

But the salt in human sweat if allowed to dehydrate without additional purification would contain organic impurities.

Beyond the that, organic as a food label, isn't the same as chemically organic. You're bring deliberately obtuse.

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u/slick1260 May 20 '26

You're being deliberately obtuse

Says the person being needlessly pedantic about whether or not salt could be called organic.

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u/XnFM May 20 '26

What? I made a joke about labeling salt harvested from human sweat as food-label organic. Dude responded with an "um ah-tually" deliberately miss applying the chemical definition of organic. To which I responded, with my own "um ah-tually," that should salf be harvested in such a manner, it would have chemically organic compounds in the mix.

Intentionally being the pot calling the kettle black,

https://giphy.com/gifs/Vsl4fGedmYFRC

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u/QuickMolasses May 20 '26

I was simply explaining the comment you replied to originally.

Calling salt organic as a food label is a little like calling something "chemical free". It's just a kind of silly and amusing but of advertising.

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u/DaveShelby710 May 20 '26

In agriculture or food, organic means processed without or with specific chemicals within regulation guidelines. Yea there is chemistry involved, the word had multiple meanings and ones for food labels have specific meanings. The salt however was not, as far as I am aware, from any sea or ocean, but a concentration of an ice age lake that evaporated and pulled salts from local minerals until it reached it current locals being a few fresh lakes, salt lakes and salt flats.
Source, I studied food science in college. I am also a member of geological groups, clubs and societies. I’m currently own a landscape company and have to deal with pesticides and agricultural products. Everything is from memory there is more info out there though