Food historian reveals how salt transformed civilizations and sparked Gandhi's rebellion

For 30 cents, you can buy 250 grams of salt at any supermarket — a price so low it's easy to forget this now-cheap mineral sustained entire civilizations. In this interview, Naomi Duguid, author of The Miracle of Salt: Recipes and Techniques to Preserve, Ferment, and Transform Your Food, says we've lost sight of salt's transformative power. "Humans would not have survived in all the variety of environments that they did survive in in the pre-industrial era without the assistance of salt."

Salt doesn't just season food — it transforms it. "Salt keeps out the bad microbes," Duguid says, while creating ideal conditions for fermentation. This chemical process gave ancient peoples sauerkraut, cured meats, and the ability to survive brutal winters.

But salt's scarcity created dramatic power im