Monday, September 12, 2011

See Salt

Has anyone else noticed the explosion of sea salt in all of our snacks lately?

Every salty snack I see in the grocery now proudly announces that it uses "sea salt."


I'd never seen this on any package five years ago. They used to just say "salt."

I know that marketing is rife with copycats. When one product hits on something big, suddenly they all start doing it.

Ever since the Old Spice Guy got popular, lots of commercials now feature quirky spokespeople making nonsensical, choppy pronouncements.

+++++

So I have three questions.


Is "sea salt" the kind of salt these products always used, but they just didn't call it that? In other words, is this explosion of sea salt just a labeling phenomenon?

Or, has sea salt itself suddenly become the Next Big Thing in snacks, and whatever they used before-- rock salt? lake salt? underground gnome salt?-- has become obsolete or too expensive?


And my third question-- what's going to be the next big ingredient that they will use to sell snacks?

"Tear Salt & Chipped Molasses!"


Made from the tears of beautiful Danish children who harvested the molasses

5 comments:

chocolatechip said...

... or are we being tricked into unwittingly making a political statement with reference to Gandhi?
http://www.thenagain.info/webchron/india/SaltMarch.html And what are we saying?
I, too, wonder if sea salt is what we've always been using.

Tim said...

Somehow I doubt the makers of salty snacks are that invested in Gandhi's message. If only the conspiracy was so benevolent!

Jolene said...

Haha! That is exactly the humor that M has..random things like this and then closing with something even funnier - that was hilarious. But so true. Salt IS sea salt! right?!

Tim said...

Thanks, Jolene. Is all salt sea salt? That's the question. I guess I could find out-- I am a librarian after all. But I prefer to ask the questions, not answer them. :)

Anonymous said...

Tim,

One of the largest deposits of salt is buried under the great state of Michigan, and is mined and exported to salt comanies.

SO, most of the salt we consume is
"Dug in the USA.!