Remove The Cyanide and Other Toxic Ingredients from Our Table Salt!

Check your salt ingredients. Does this contain more than Sodium Chloride (salt) and iodine? Probably, yes. 

While iodine is a good agent, contributing toward optimum endocrine health, table salt may also contain harmful agents -- sugar, dextrose (glucose) -- known to increase the blood sugar levels in diabetics, and toxic chemicals -- cyanide, aluminium, bleach.

Although several studies have indicated that the continued use of refined salt will expose the consumer to aluminium, cyanide and/or bleach toxicity, this dangerous product is still on our tables because manufactures want to secure their profits, selling a long shelf life table salt with poisonous ingredients. This issue bothers me for a while, especially because I have noticed that people who usually are conscious about reading the ingredients on a food product, they omit to check what their salt box contains. This is because they expect the salt to be exactly what the name implies.

Reading about online activism throughout the course, I realised that social media is really capable of “rearticulating solidarity across the world” (Kennedy, 2011). For instance, according to Pew Research Center, “31% of social media users have used the tools to encourage other people to take action on a political or social issue that is important to them” (Rainie et al., para. 7).  Moreover, a report about #Occupy movement indicates that “77.3% [participants] posted about Occupy via Facebook”; and “62.1% signed a petition” (Constanza-Chock, 2012, fig. 3, p. 5). These numbers speak for themselves: They indicate the powerful influence the online activism has nowadays.

For that reason, I took this opportunity to write a petition to address the salt table issue. Ok. Maybe this subject is not so interesting as the #Occupy subject is, yet if you think that every one of us consumes salt with every meal, it is essential to be sure that this will not kill us.

https://www.change.org/p/the-public-health-agency-of-canada-stop-the-cyanide-aluminium-and-bleach-poisoning-with-table-salt

I am aware that this petition might not reach its 100 signatures target. Yet, if some people will check the ingredients on the salt packages, and make the right choice when buying salt, this petition will make a difference. And why not? Maybe, someday, because of our informed choice, all the salt brands will be safe for consumption. It is time to act! Sign this petition! “[The] ‘real’ change can only come from outside the representative democratic system” (Juris, 2012, p. 261). 

References

 (2015). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXeUIYyDE0g

Corriher, C. (2015). The Truth About Table Salt and The Chemical Industry.Healthwyze.org. Retrieved 15 March 2015, from http://healthwyze.org/index.php/component/content/article/115-the-truth-about-table-salt-and-the-chemical-industry.html

Costanza-Chock, S. (2013). Mic Check! Media Practices in the Occupy Movement: Social Movement Studies. Retrieved March 13 http://web.mit.edu/schock/www//docs/pubs/mic-check-2012-costanza-chock.pdf. 

Juris, J. (2012). “Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere: Social Media, Public Space, and Emerging Logics of Aggregation.” American Ethnologist, (2), 259. doi:10.1111/j.15481425.2012.01362.

Kennedy, M. (2011). Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and Historical Frames: 2011, 1989, 1968. Jadaliyya.com. Retrieved 2 April 2015, from http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/2853/arab-spring-occupy-wall-street-and-historical-fram

Louix Dor Dempriey Foundation,. (2011). The Difference Between Refined Salt and Unrefined Salt - Louix Dor Dempriey Foundation. Retrieved 15 March 2015, from http://www.louix.org/the-difference-between-refined-salt-and-unrefined-salt/

NaturalNews,. (2015). Confront Salt Confusion. Retrieved 15 March 2015, from http://www.naturalnews.com/026080_salt_sodium_health.html#ixzz3UIjunn4G

Rainie, L., Smith, A., Lehman Schlozman, K.,Brady, H & Verba, S. (2012). “Social Media and Political Engagement,” Pew Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/10/19/social-media-and-political-engagement/