Does Sea Salt Really Come From The Ocean?

If you've ever accidentally had your mouth open when you got knocked over by a wave at the beach, you know that ocean water is really, really salty. Myths from around the world try to explain why this is the case: a folktale from Norway posits that someone stole a magic mill that endlessly generated salt and didn't know how to turn it off, while Hindu mythology says that a powerful sage drank up every ocean then urinated it back out. In truth, it's the result of ocean water breaking down rocks, as well as runoff from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor.

But does the "sea salt" sold at your local supermarket really come from the sea? Or has Madison Avenue pulled the wool over our eyes once again, like how they do with sneaky neuromarketing or when they tried to tell us that Arby's had the meats? Worry not: The sea salt that gets sprinkled on your salt and vinegar potato chips does, in fact, come from the ocean — after a fashion, anyway.

Technically, all salt is sea salt, even if not all salt is harvested from the sea. The vast underground deposits of rock salt that make up today's salt mines are the remnants of seas that have long since evaporated. Mining that kind of salt is as straightforward as mining any other mineral but harvesting salt from seawater requires a bit more finesse.

Different civilizations across histories used different methods to harvest salt from the sea. The Romans gathered seawater slurry in barrels and used clean seawater to get rid of impurities, while the traditional method on the Visayas Islands of the Philippines involves soaking coconut husks and other plants in seawater for months to collect the residue. The most common method is to let the sun evaporate the water, leaving only the salt behind. This is done using large, shallow salt evaporation ponds, which sometimes occur naturally and are sometimes formed artificially. Not all salt sold as sea salt is harvested through these methods, but all salt must meet the FDA minimum for purity – and, hey, it all came from the ocean at some point regardless of how it's mined.