Is All Himalayan Pink Salt the Same?

Do you reach for Himalayan Pink Salt when you're shopping for salt at the store? Have you ever wondered if there's any difference between one brand and another? I had those questions too, and I'm answering them for you today in this blog post.

This post is sponsored by HimalaSalt

📋 What's New In This Post (1/25/25) - Updated page formatting and the wording of some paragraphs.

✍🏻 Featured Comment - Linda says "I rarely read long blog posts, just skim them to get “the gist.” But this one was so interesting and important that I read and absorbed every word. Thank you."

Is All Himalayan Pink Salt the Same?

A big, fat NOPE! (This blog post would be boring if I said yes, right?)

When you shop for Pink Himalayan Salt at different stores, the most noticeable difference you’ll see is the price. There’s pink salt that’s dirt cheap, and then there’s pink salt that’s a lot more expensive. So, why the price discrepancy? I knew there had to be a reason.

Why is There Cheap Pink Himalayan Salt?

This is really a two-part answer—we'll get to the second part later in this post. Right now, think about this: Pink Himalayan salt doesn't come from our backyard unless you live in Pakistan. It is imported into this country, and there are expenses associated with that. It’s clearly less expensive for me to travel from Ann Arbor, Michigan, to my house in Milan, Michigan, than it is to travel from Ann Arbor to Milan, Italy. It costs money to get all that salt here, which means that somewhere along the way, costs are being cut. Unfortunately, that nearly always means at the expense of some hardworking laborers.

How are They Treating their Workers?

This is always an issue to consider when you’re buying an imported product. Other parts of the world don’t have our labor standards. Yes, America is not perfect either. I still believe that many people are underpaid compared to what those at the top of the same companies are making—I'll refrain from getting on a soapbox about this issue for now. In other parts of the world, it’s far worse. Inhumane, even.

People are paid wages that you couldn’t imagine, which would probably make you feel very uncomfortable to think about.

Pink Himalayan salt comes from the same general region. However, it’s not all packed in the same region, nor is it mined by the same people.

Who Are You Buying From?

You need to choose a company you can trust. Do they have a website with information about their practices? Can you even trace them at all? This can be hard to do sometimes when all you have is a store-brand label.

When something is trendy, people want to get in on it to make a buck. There are businesses out there that will do that, as long as it’s profitable, and will abandon ship once it’s not, moving on to the next thing. No long-term commitment—just in for a quick cash grab. In fact, most of us probably have no clue who these companies are—they aren’t even trying to build name recognition.

This is important from a quality standpoint. Someone who doesn’t care about the actual product itself and only cares about the money they can make from it isn’t going to put much thought into producing a quality product. They just want to get it ready, sell it, and move on.

How It Is Packed Matters

Besides the quality of the actual salt itself, there may be other issues at stake. The way the salt is packed can be very important for those with food allergies. Wait, who is allergic to salt?

The salt itself is not the problem. The problem is what the salt comes into contact with. Does the packaging facility use shared equipment with other foods? Someone with a severe allergy could have a reaction from eating salt that came into contact with their allergen.

If you have any kind of food allergy, it is important to read the label. At best, choose sources that only package salt on dedicated equipment. If they use a co-packer, make sure they aren’t one themselves.

Is Redder Himalayan Salt Really Better?

Somehow, we’ve gotten the idea into our heads that redder food is better. Case in point: the Red Delicious apple. Bred to be redder and redder over the years, to the point that they’re now almost black in color. What has that done to the flavor? They stopped being delicious decades ago, and most people would agree. Now, the only time Red Delicious apples are consumed is at a hotel continental breakfast or at a gas station where it’s the only "real food" available.

The original Red Delicious strain was called the Hawkeye. I had one once. It was "delicious." As the apple was bred to be redder, the skin actually became more bitter-tasting. The same can be said for Pink Himalayan salt. The redder the salt, the more bitter it tastes.

My Taste Test – I picked out some really red and cloudy Himalayan salt and tasted it next to an only slightly pink, opaque salt. The redder the salt, the more bitter the taste. It reminded me of table salt – that kind of off, metallic taste. When it comes to choosing Himalayan salt, keep this in mind: redder is not better. Choose salt that is a mix of white, rose pink, and orange.

Better Grade of Salt

Remember earlier when I was addressing why there is cheap Pink Himalayan salt? Well, this is the second part of my answer. When it comes down to it, there are different grades of salt. Just like not all coffee is the same, not all chocolate is the same, and not all mushrooms growing in the wild are the same (Morels, I’m thinking about you). There are higher grades of Pink Himalayan salt.

As you would expect, the higher-grade salt is harder to come by, so, in part, it should come with a heftier price tag. More work goes into selecting the finest grades by both harvesting only the best and packaging only the best for sale.

Top Recommendation

The Pink Himalayan salt that comes with the Eat Like No One Else seal of approval is from the HimalaSalt brand. I have tried many Pink Himalayan salts, and according to my taste buds, theirs is the best.

So, I decided to reach out to them with questions I had about their salt business and was kindly greeted with lots of information from their President and Founder, Melissa Kushi.

Looking for a Salt Kit?

As a blogger, I have a lot of neat tools at my disposal. One of those tools is Google Trends, which tells me what people are looking for—hopefully, I can find the answers. As we discussed at the top of this post, Himalayan Pink Salt is certainly trendy. I found that a lot of people are looking for Himalayan Pink Salt kits. This is basically a block of salt that comes with a grater.

You can get one of these (makes a great gift) from HimalaSalt. What I like about theirs is that the grater is an Inox stainless steel grater. It is a higher-quality grater that won't leave tiny shavings of metal in your food, like you might get with chrome or aluminum graters, which are more common.