From BRWiki
Salt is a dietary mineral that is essential for animal life, but toxic to most land plants. Salt flavor is one of the basic tastes, and salt is the most popular food seasoning. Salt is also an important preservative.
It is the use as a preservative of meat and fish which provides the primary value of salt. Incidental consumption of salt from the preserving process of meats provides more than enough salt for nutrition and also influences taste, so that many people expect and even desire the taste of salt in their food because they are accustomed to the taste of preserved meats.
Salt for human consumption is obtained from one of two forms forms, sea salt and rock salt. It is obtained from sea water or rock deposits, respectively. Edible rock salts may be slightly grayish in color due to this mineral content.
