Not everyone knows this, but most skilled cooks have not one but several kinds of vinegar and flour in their kitchens. If you use the wrong one in a delicate dish, chances are that you’ll be ordering pizza that night.

But what’s even more surprising is that there are different kinds of salt. Kosher salt, sea salt and table salt are all basically the same (here, they are arranged from purest to least pure, though this isn’t true in every case). The main difference is in the texture and size of the grains.

Pink Himalayan salt is typically mined at depths of up to 5,000 feet, meaning that it has been subjected to huge pressures over literally millions of years. Perhaps for this reason, it has a very large variety of trace minerals – 98 of them, in fact – which gives the crystals a rosy color.

Now, of course we know that “too much” salt is bad for you. However, the situation is not really that clear-cut. On the other hand, Himalayan salt is still about 98% sodium, so it’s unclear whether its mineral content can have any effect on the body at all.

Some people claim that Himalayan pink salt has some kind of unique molecular structure. Now, I’m certainly no authority on chemistry, but this statement smells highly fishy to me.

Others say that it purifies the air, and this might actually be true. We know that some plants have this ability, so it doesn’t seem too far fetched.

On the fringes, a couple of people allege that it blocks electromagnetic radiation – I’m really pretty certain that it doesn’t.

So, believe what you want, but I have actually tasted it, and it does seem somehow more salty and rounded, presumably because of those trace elements. If that is what you really want from your salt, and you don’t mind getting a small amount of extra nutrition along with it, it’s well worth the price.