The Pink Salt Trick: Myth, Magic or Just Salty?

More than likely you've heard of the Pink Salt Trick for weight loss. I've known about it for a year or more but it's only been a few weeks that it's come to the center of my radar screen. This winter I've been gaining weight at an alarm rate and when I got my summer clothes out most of them were too tight. I hate tight clothing on me and other people. If they show tummy rolls and cellulite I won't wear a garment. Even on women who are slim and fit if her "camel toes" are showing I'm going to mentally call her out for wearing a second skin and calling it workout gear. And before anyone is tempted to scold for not being politically correct, I would never say anything out loud to another woman, to her friends and mine so how is that body shaming if I keep it to myself? Either way, I'm not going to be silenced in my own blog for what I think. Sooner rather than later all of us who grew up with a certain standard of decency in dressing will die off and then the sin of women judging the way other women dress will be solved.

Boy, did I get off track! Back to pink salt. I can't help thinking about my brother when the topic of salt comes up. A few years ago when I was on a kick to learn more about cooking I wanted to buy a pricey gift box of salts from around the world. I was fascinated that you can get black, pink, brown, yellow and blue salt as well as the white I've seen all of my life. My brother and I bickered back and forth, as siblings tend to do, about whether or not they tasted any different. He thought it was a rip off---that there wouldn't be any difference except in price---and I thought it might be one of the secrets of good cooking that he learned and I didn't. 

I never did get my sampler box of salt but I did manage to buy some pink Himalayan salt at the grocery store that went mostly unused until recently. Pink salt comes from the Himalayan mountains and supposedly it contains many trace minerals including calcium, magnesium and potassium. Anytime I've dieted in the past I've never tried the fad diets. It's been Weight Watchers, Tops, gym memberships and once I did a doctor supervised, all liquid diet that was my favorite because I never got hungry. I take that back, my mom and I did the cabbage soup diet once. That must have been back in the '70s and I haven't eaten cabbage since. 

When I first googled the Pink Salt Trick I lucked out and found a straight forward recipe---a practically free concoction to put together.  I was not so lucky the next few times I google the Pink Salt Trick looking for more information about its safety, etc., and I found instead Oprah's VERY LONG video hawking a weight loss pill based on pink Himalayan salt. Both the free concoction and Oprah's pill claim that they tackle insulin resistance and is an alternate to the Mounjaro shots that people are paying big money out-of-pocket for but are getting amazing results. Both Pink Salt Tricks have dozens of testimonials attached to their claims.  

I'd already tried the free version before stumbling on to Oprah's video and silly me I thought I'd just be finding some science behind it and variations to the basic recipe so I started watching it. Instead, near the end of her VERY LONG video she revealed that she's selling pills, pills called Prozenith made with pink salt and three other ingredients you can only get in Japan. It ticked me off that she made one of those so-called medical break-through videos. In my mind if it's a good product you don't say things like "we only have 182 bottles left in stock so order now!" You also don't make people buy two bottles at a time for $79 each while encouraging people to buy eight at a time at a reduced rate of $50 a bottle. You also don't have to offer the first ten people who place an order a zoom meeting with Oprah. 

Out of curiosity I did a google search to see if you could by the Prozenith any place else other than at the VERY LONG video website and I found a product on Amazon called Pro Prozenith that contains two of the four ingredients in common with those in the pills Oprah is hawking but for less than half the price. The labels even look the same except for the addition of the word Pro and the difference in the ingredients. 

According to the VERY LONG video The Pink Salt Trick was first introduced in Dr. Casey Means book, Good Energy and from what I gather from the video she helped Oprah loss a bunch of weight and afterward they started working together to make the Pink Salt Trick into a pill form that they could bring to market. Their formula has pink salt, quercein, bern berberiene and mountain root. The practically free version has pink salt, lemon juice, honey and water. 

To make things even more interesting a 10 minute video of Oprah showed up in my Facebook feed that I suspect was AI generated. It introduced the Pink Salt 'Hack' and a web link to a guy selling a liquid drop version of a concoction made with pink salt, bern bereriene and an ingredient you can only get in Brazil. See a pattern here? I didn't watch his entire video because the ending was predictable...a high pressure pitch to buy his high priced hack/liquid drops.

Like I said before, I didn't know there was more than one Pink Salt Trick out there before I tried the practically free version. All the testimonials for all three versions claim dramatic lost weight without changing their diet or exercising. To judge if this is true, I drank the nearly-free concoction for a week without going to our gym or taking walks around the campus. I also didn't give up eating things I know I should. For example over the week I had 7 pieces of Ghirardelli's dark chocolate squares, 4 cookies and 2 bowls of ice cream and I didn't cut the portions down on any of my meals nor did I pass up on the bread they serve here with all dinners. I lost 4.8 pounds in the first seven days and maybe it's magical thinking but I feel better---less food obsessing going on in my head. No foraging in the kitchen out of boredom. It also didn't effect my blood pressure. 

By the middle of my second week, the scale seemed to get stuck and by the end of the week I'd only lost two more pounds and I had given up all sugary stuff except for my daily dose of chocolate, so I expected more. I really need to add exercise to the mix. I only average around 2,500 steps a day. Am I going to keep using the salt? As long as it doesn't start effecting my blood pressure will---I'm checking it 2-3 times a day. If you'd tried a Pink Salt Trick what was your experience? ©

Until next Wednesday.  

The Pink Salt Trick Recipe

1/4 teaspoon of pink salt dissolved in an 8 oz cup of warm filtered water. Add a 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice and 1 teaspoon of raw honey. Drink this first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. I've seen suggestions where you can add grated ginger, mint leaves or coconut water to mix things up, if you get bored with the taste or can't get it down. I find that drinking it fast without stopping allows you to avoid the taste issue all together.