If there's one thing I have a lot of contempt for, it's neo-hippie bullshit. However, my appreciation for fresh produce just barely overthrows this contempt, so sometimes I go shopping at The Berkeley Bowl for all kinds of fruits and vegetables that I've never heard of. Really, they have some wonky shit there. Ever see a Buddha's Hand?Anyhoo, they sell sea salt there. Salt, like 'out the ocean. And people buy it. And those people are morons.
If you buy sea salt, you're paying a premium for the luxury of being a douchebag. It's salt. It has no discernible flavor other than salty, it has no metric of quality other than not mixed with dirt and glass shards, and it should have no variation in price other than cheap.
You can buy 4 pounds of standard issue table salt for $5.37 on the internet. Alternatively, I've seen 4 ounces of sea salt for sale for $2.39. That's a markup of roughly 712%. It's a pretty good business if you're selling salt.
In fact, sea salt might even be bad for you. Regular salt has been used for years as a vehicle for iodine, a chemical your body needs to keep you from becoming a retard. No bullshit, iodine deficiency can cause mental retardation. It only costs a dollar or so to iodize a ton of salt, so it really is ideal. Most sea salt isn't iodized, because it's sold as "natural". Boy, a lesser product for way more money? Where do I sign up?
Some people claim to be able to distinguish the "superior flavor" of sea salt. These are the same kinds of people who keep a fridge stocked with gallons of bottled water and don't use the tap for anything but watering a house cactus. If you are one of these people, you should kill yourself as a public service. The only real difference between sea salt and table salt you'll feel when you eat it is the coarseness of sea salt. That's it. And coarse salt isn't worth fucking ten dollars a pound.
tl;dr if you're buying sea salt, consider yourself successfully marketed to. It's like Fiji water. You got hustled.