How Pink Salt Took Over Millennial Kitchens

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"We’ve been told we’re not supposed to eat salt, but we need to, and we’re biologically compelled to, and flavor doesn’t work without it. So we had to find some way to understand this tension between the existential terror of eating it and the physiological reality of needing it. What we did was we said, ‘Uh, natural salt, pink salt, whatever—that’s safe.’”

MARK BITTERMAN

Aesthetically Pleasing Pink

As a lesson for marketers, the popularity of pink salt has been due to various dynamics in food, media, and health.

Pink salt might be pretty, but it wouldn’t have reached its current popularity without a significant boost from trendy notions of wellness. Some point out the pink color, which makes it attractive to consumers.

No Special Powers

While most food fads are due to them having a particular quality, like health benefits, this hasn't been the case with Pink Salt.

The sudden rise of Pink Salt has nothing to do with the wellness advantages but with timing and marketing.

'Mystical' Origins

Himalayan salt’s status as an outsider in American and European traditions seems key to its success.

Because pink salt is marketed as healthy and Eastern, it joins condiments like turmeric and matcha as ingredients that have long become fetishized—and sometimes appropriated—for their mystical foreignness and near-magical medicinal properties.