Salt-free

Wang ayi, our housekeeper, told me this morning that you cant buy yan in Shanghai. I didnt understand. Maybe she meant potassium iodide. I knew that there was a run on this yesterday from the Shanghai Daily, which my son swears reported, in an early online edition, that people could take cyanide to protect their thyroid glands in the event that a cloud of radiation should reach Shanghai. (Yeah, if you take cyanide, I guess you wont need to worry about thyroid cancer.)

Yan. She reached for my salt shaker to bang into my head what she was saying. Salt? Why would there be a run on salt?

She didnt know. Maybe, she surmised, because salt comes from the sea, and the sea is now unsafe, thanks to radiation from Japan. She herself has 4 jin (half-kilos, or roughly pounds) of salt in her (tiny) apartment.

I have about one cup of salt in my house. Chinese people eat more salt than foreigners, she tells me. Thinking about our American diet, I find that hard to believe.

And wasnt it just a couple of days ago that we read in the Shanghai Daily about a scam whereby industrial salt was being repackaged and sold as table salt? And that industrial salt contains harmful nitrite substances which can cause dizziness, stomach pains, damage kidneys and if large quantities are consumed lead to death. http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/?id=466367&type=Metro.

Maybe its okay that I missed the boat on salt. And who knows, maybe it will even lower our blood pressure.