Salt in snus

[snusbear1]

Just a quick (and perhaps dumb) question:

Salt is listed in the snus ingredient lists as a "flavor enhancer." But is there any other purpose to all that salt in snus? Does it help with nicotine absorption or something?

[RobME]

There are no dumb questions... only dumb answers; here's (possibly) one of them - since I have no genuinely factual reply - I'll hazard a guess.

Back in the day when they discovered they liked sticking moist tobacco in their mouths they decided to make a lot of it at a time. Refrigerators hadn't yet been invented and most of 'em didn't own iceboxes, so all this moist snus sitting around started growing moldy and foul. Someone (I think his name was Ettan Tre-Ankare) discovered that if he salted the snus, the salt acted like a preservative anti-fungal ingredient, and they could enjoy their salty warm moist snus without it spoiling.

They've been salting snus for so long in Sweden, that they actually began to love the taste of it. By the time they could all afford ice-boxes, there was no going back to saltless snus. It had become part of the culture, and no one could ever remember that it was any other way.

And that's the story of the salt and the snus.

(someone else might just post the true answer - cause I really don't have a clue) 8)

... welcome to the forum btw...

[snusfather]

I've heard from folks that make snus that the unsalted tobbaco is so bland, it's almost intolerable. As mentioned above, it also makes a great preservative. I think another ancillary benefit is that it freezes better because it probobly never quite freezes (no freezer burn).

[chainsnuser]

I don't know the answer for sure, but I guess it's indeed just a flavor-enhancer. The amounts of table salt (5% in most brands) are maybe too small to kill all germs.

I guess, most of the salty taste comes from the soda, which is AFAIK also the main ingredient to freebase the nicotine (otherwise we wouldn't get any buzz, yeah, I chewed some fresh leaves of my homegrown tobacco - no buzz at all). The soda in combination with the nicotine and the rather small amounts of table salt should be enough to virtually kill all the germs, which indeed was needed to keep the snus fresh, before refrigerators existed, like RobME already has pointed out.

5% of table salt means that 20 portions have only one gram, which is half of the minimum-amount of salt, that a human being needs per day to stay alive, it's not at all health-critical (I personally don't believe all the "we eat too much salt-propaganda" in the first place, but that's just my own belief - I guess more people have died from eating too little salt than from eating too much). Salt is needed for our muscles and for the water-metabolism of our body to function properly. The 'salt-hating' doctors and pseudo-health-experts are in my eyes no better than the tobacco-hating ones. Anti-salt-propaganda is just another way for some health professionals to make money. I'm not saying that absolutely nobody should worry about salt, but a healthy person certainly does not need to worry. Our body has it's own perfect ways to handle salt, even if we eat a little too much of it.

Besides of that, yeah, as a snuser, you have to love salt (table salt and soda), because even for a dedicated "salt-lover" like me, the salt-taste is somewhat 'heavy'. I really needed to get used to it, especially in situations, when I had nothing to drink on hand.

And yeah, I live 2 miles away from the formerly most important trade road of Europe, called the "Hellweg", which means "Salt Ave." Here in the region salt is used in expressions like "the salt of life", NOT "the salt of death", so I'm biased and I'm used to the taste of salt, which is always 'heavy' in the local cuisine.

Cheers!

[Grim]

Actually, i took out a can of gotlands gul los today from the freezer and opened it up and it was covered in HUGE ice crystals.

It was pretty freezer burnt, so i threw it out.

The other only had a small speck of ice on it and i thawed it out and its good.

Salt seems to help preserve it and add some character.

[Premium Parrots]

The 4 lb tub of Gellivare I received from Northerner came with a 4.5 gram baggie of sodium stuff. The directions indicated to mix 1.5 grams with the 4 lbs. I tried the snus without mixing the sodium and yes it had quite a bland flavor. I have yet to make time to mix this stuff up.............maybe today.

[mercvrivs]

Salt increases the rate of nicotine absorption through the oral mucosa.

[raptor]

High salt concentrations also create a hypertonic environment which prevents the growth of bacteria.

[snusbear1]

I live 2 miles away from the formerly most important trade road of Europe, called the "Hellweg", which means "Salt Ave." Here in the region salt is used in expressions like "the salt of life....

Curious, I would think that Hellweg would mean something like "bright" way or avenue, and that Salt Ave. would be "Salzweg"? Maybe since it IS an ancient road, its naming goes to back to a much older form of German, closer in time to its Celtic roots, than the Hochdeutsch I speak (with perhaps something of a plattdeutsch accent, from the time I spent in northern Germany - I remember my first day there trying figure out what the hell "moin moin" meant (roughly, guten Tag)!).

And I imagine the expression "the salt of life" is pretty much universal, though in Anglophone countries "the spice of life" is more usual.

The 'salt-hating' doctors and pseudo-health-experts are in my eyes no better than the tobacco-hating ones. Anti-salt-propaganda is just another way for some health professionals to make money.

Like you, I'm no "health nut" either, and am a sworn enemy of the political correctness movement, but I do have high blood pressure, and I find that my numbers are much better when I lay off the excess salt than when I pour it on liberally - that's not propaganda, it's just a clinical fact (not that snus would necessarily affect it much one way or the other).

Cheers!

[chainsnuser]

snusbear1,

yes, "Hell" (or "Hall") is an old German word, that's no longer in use (besides "hell", meaning "bright", which could stem from the bright color of salt), but it is found in names of salt-producing towns. No doubt that it means "salt". Due to the fact that most salt in Germany is from underground (no surface mining) it could also be related to "Hölle" (or "hell" in English).

"The salt of life" is indeed quite universal. That's the reason why I used this example.

No doubt, that salt also can have negative health effects and maybe even in comparatively small amounts, but I think the actual anti-salt-propaganda is totally exaggerated - up to a point where people who believe the propaganda may get health-problems from eating too little salt. Well, I'm somewhat biased, as I said.

Salt today isn't as valuable as it used to be. The Hellweg today is a rather small street. It's even no longer the main street of the city and the nearest salt-producing facility in the neighbour town Unna is long closed.

BTW, I spent most of my military service in Bremen and also got used to saying "moin" to everyone. It's only used in the North of Germany.

Cheers!