http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/26/the-salt-wars/

That was an interesting article
thanks

That was interesting. Thank you

Another act of northern aggression!

There were alternative means of preserving meat back then. Smoking was always an option as was drying, like the Native Americans did.

Smoking should have been a no brainer. Look at where all the good BBQ is now, in the American South.

Smoking fish has been a long time means of preserving the harvest in Scandinavia, and Europe in general prior to refrigeration, it would have worked then, too. But, I'm sure that they wanted to save those hickory trees for something else, like making baseball bats.

think Encyclopaedia Britannica mentioned something about salt being needed by people who were living off of something other than meat. said that people who eat meat get the salt that they need from it. and i think meat might have been in short supply after the Civil War, except in Texas which had problems getting their cattle to market.

think we're supposed to be cutting back on salt because it's already added to most of our food.

I think this article is inflating and creating a fake importance for salt. They had far more pressing issues at the time then salt. They were an agricultural powerhouse in the south during the civil war. I doubt they struggled from lack of a mineral. It was probably more of a nuisance than a factor. As Cerberus said, you can dry or smoke meat to preserve it as well.

i think that it's so normal that we have salt now that people might have forgotten how important it is. Ghandi did like a 200 mile protest march to the sea and made his own salt in defiance of British law or some such nonsense. one of them things people take for granted until they can't get it.

most people also probably don't remember about sugar rationing and whatever else was rationed during WWII. especially why pantyhose was such an extravagant present.