Omnivore - Polish food seasoned with road salt

• Kaihsu Tai, Wiki Commons

Want some industrial salt on that sausage?

===USA Today reported that about a half million pounds of Polish food was recalled=== as a result of some sketchy business in the industry. Turns out, road salt (you know, that stuff they throw down on icy roads) was being illegally sold to food producers. Most of the foods were the kinds preserved in salt—pickles, beets, sausages, and other Polish-y things.

This sounds appalling and gross, probably because it conjures up images of, like, used road salt with bits of gravel and dirt and what not. But actually, it’s not that bad. Industrial salt is pretty much just regular salt. It doesn’t have any toxic chemicals or anything. The problem is that it isn’t enriched with iodine, which is against the law.

I’m just gonna stick to my version of the story that I created when I read the headline: scheming and penny-pinching food industry execs decide to preserve pickles and beets by just scooping up some of that perfectly good salt on the road and running with it. Now there’s a scandal.