Mark Miodownik

It's also about preservation.

It has been used for centuries, for thousands of years to preserve things like fish and meat.

And of course, now we live in the world of refrigeration.

That's not quite as bad a problem, but it's still a problem.

It's still the case today that salt is used.

And also for fermented foods, it's a big nutritional trend at the moment.

It's better for your gut, they say.

But without salt, you can't really ferment properly because what salt is doing in that situation is it's preventing certain bacteria from thriving and spoiling the food.

We have these preservatives called sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite.

You'll see them on the ingredients of packets for preservatives of sausages and bacon and all those things.

So the sodium intake could come from those.

One of the other things entrepreneurs might be doing at this point is because the sea is still salty...

They might be bottling seawater and selling it as a cool drink to replace your electrolytes and sell it to chefs who can spray it onto their food.

So the condiments on the table in the cool restaurants might have a saline spray, which is seawater.

There are things called salt licks that you have to put in fields.

And the animals haven't had it for a week, which is probably not too bad.

But all the farmers know this is only going to go one way.

They're all their flocks and herds are going to start to wither and die.

They'll have enough in the current feedstocks, but the farmers are farsighted people.

They're asking for potassium chloride to be given.