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From A Nude Beach to Your Table – A Salty Tale
On the Salt Trail in Mallorca
Salt is indispensable to our lives and as necessary to our health as it is lethal. Salt is steeped in ancient Roman and natural history and is also a major industry in many parts of the world. In Mallorca, Spain, the company Salinas d’Es Trenc produces 10,000 tons of salt each summer, preserving a nurturing wildlife refuge and one of the largest undeveloped private waterfront properties on the island.
On a recent visit to Mallorca, I was a Salinero for one afternoon. I followed the historic trail of Flor de Sal from a nude beach gently caressed by the Mediterranean Sea to a jar of crystalline sea salt, as at home on the dinner table as it is in shops all over the world. This is what I learned along the way.
Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Romans were the early “Salineros,” or salt workers, in the southeast of Mallorca. After they were removed by the vagaries of history, the salt flats were abandoned for centuries until, in the 1950s, it became economically feasible to reopen them and restore their importance as a Mallorcan industry. Now, in August and September each year, up to 10,000 tons of salt can be harvested by Salinas d’Es Trenc.
Starting at Es Trenc beach, one of the most popular clothing-optional beaches in Mallorca, the naked sea water flows through an ancient Roman canal into the man-made salt marshes. Over the course of many months, it naturally follows a winding seven-mile route through hundreds of acres of marshy wetland and three earthen barriers, or natural filters, to its final harvest by-hand. This virgin sea salt is naturally lower in sodium chloride and has a higher concentration of minerals and trace elements than ordinary table salt.
The marshes themselves are a distinct ecosystem populated by a diverse manner of life forms. From the lowliest of microorganisms, a reddish, beta carotene producing microalgae called Dunaliella Salina, to tiny red crustaceans called Artemia Salina who feed on the Dunaliella, up through a variety of more than 150 migrating and resident birds to the flamboyance of flamingos feeding on the Artemia Salina, all need the salt marshes to survive. Additionally, it is the redness of the beta carotene in the food chain which gives the flamingos their pink color.
But the preservation of such a diverse array of wildlife is but a side product, albeit a most beneficial and beautiful one, of industry on Mallorca’s salt flats. Here Salinas d’Es Trenc produces one of the world’s purest sea salts: Flor de Sal.
Without salt, life on Earth as we know it could not exist. Now that’s a bold statement but consider this: 70% of the earth is covered by oceans, and 94% of all life on Earth lives in those salty oceans. Plus, human blood has some of the highest salinity of any blood, which is necessary for proper cell function; in other words, we need salt to live! (Weird Fact: Sharks naturally dislike the saltiness of our blood. It is an acquired taste, like scotch.)
On the other hand, salt can kill. The Romans used to plow salt into the fields of their enemies to prevent their crops from growing, thereby starving them into submission or flight. Salt is used to preserve food because organisms can’t grow in it. And in humans, too much salt in our systems raises blood pressure, which increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases like heart attack and stroke, our leading cause of death.
That is sobering news to consider as you sprinkle more salt on your food. But there is good news. Not all salt is alike. Sea salt has micronutrients not found in ordinary table salt. And while scientists say that the nutritional value of sea salt over table salt is negligible, consider the claims that Flor de Sal has 16 to 20 times more magnesium than regular sea salt. That helps one to taste more of the saltiness, thereby needing to use less Flor de Sal to gain the same salty taste in food. That is the basis of Salinas d’Es Trenc’s claims that their sea salt is healthier for you.
In a press release, Stiftung Warentest, the premier German Consumer Organization, said it “recently recognized an outstanding Spanish product, and the company behind it, for being the best salt of its kind and for being a local sustainable brand, respectively. Flor de Sal d’Es Trenc, made by Salinas d’Es Trenc, was rated as the very best salt out of a group of 41 different salts . . . for its quality, receiving the highest possible score, as well as its flavor, chemical composition, and health and nutritional profile.”
Salinas d’Es Trenc produces salt for water conditioners, salt for deicing and for various industrial uses, as well as for human consumption. That is an economic boon to Mallorca. And while doing that they preserve a nurturing wildlife refuge and one of the largest undeveloped private waterfront properties on the island.
But it is more fun to learn this as I did – first-hand wading from the surf into the salt marshes of Salinas d’Es Trenc – rather than reading about it, and the folks there are most accommodating. So, when you are next in Mallorca, and you tire of rubbing sunscreen on body parts that might be better left unseen, suit up for a visit to the salt marshes and Mallorca’s award-winning sea salt – Flor de Sal d’Es Trenc, made by Salinas d’Es Trenc. http://www.salinasdestrenc.com
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From A Nude Beach to Your Table – A Salty Tale
Richard Frisbie
Out of Town Blog
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