Anti-Semitic salt

Via Mike the Mad Biologist:

You've heard of kosher salt? Now there's a Christian variety.

Retired barber Joe Godlewski says he was inspired by television chefs who repeatedly recommended kosher salt in recipes.

"I said, 'What the heck's the matter with Christian salt?'" Godlewski said, sipping a beer in the living room of his home in unincorporated Cresaptown, a western Maryland mountain community.

By next week, his trademarked Blessed Christians Salt will be available at http://www.memphi.net, the Web site of Memphis, Tenn.-based seasonings manufacturer Ingredients Corporation of America.

It's sea salt that's been blessed by an Episcopal priest, ICA President Damon S. Arney said Wednesday. He said the company also hopes to market the salt through Christian bookstores and as a fundraising tool for religious groups.

Chemically, kosher salt is the same sodium chloride as any other table salt. The main differences are that kosher salt usually has no additives (such as iodine) and that it is milled into much larger grains that common American table salt. Kosher salt is not blessed by a rabbi (neither is any other kosher food). The name kosher comes from the fact that large grain salt is used to prepare kosher meats.

Some cooks believe kosher salt has a different, and superior, taste than other table salts. Except for flavors caused by additives and other impurities, kosher salt tastes exactly the same as any other salt because they are exactly the same stuff (see previous paragraph). In any dish where the salt dissolves, non-iodized salt and kosher salt will taste the same. The difference in grain size only matters when the salt is used on the surface of food. Large grain salt stays intact and doesn't melt so that you get little bursts of salt flavor on foods like pretzels and roast beef. If you put kosher salt into a little plastic tub and quadruple the price it becomes margarita salt.

Godlewski's idea of blessed Christian salt may be nothing more than an attempt to commercialize on ignorance, but the whole idea reeks of anti-Semitism. Part of the intended market will be the suckers who would buy moose nuggets if they were labeled "Christian", but many other consumers of "Christian" salt will be those who want to avoid anything that has a taint of Jewishness about it. In a way, the latter group is a sub-set of the first, only with a more specific and vile reason for buying "Christian." Simply put, Godlewski's product panders to bigots.

Now that I think of it, maybe my path to wealth lies in selling Aryan moose nuggets.