My intrusive thoughts need to know.

  • WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world
    0·
    8 days ago

    I’m sorry everyone is advising against it. If you need a pink salt itch scratched they make big blocks of salt the size of cutting boards to season steak (or something I guess, I think it’s a solution looking for a problem) but they are food grade so buy five of those, stack them into a cube (bottom face is the table) and put a flashlight inside the box and go to town!

    • toynbee@piefed.socialEnglish
      0·
      8 days ago

      I’ve cooked with one of those. The idea is that you put it in your heat, then use it like a pan once it’s warm through.

      I’ve only used it once so far (cleaning it looks intimidating since you can’t use water on it) and I was skeptical it would work as claimed, so I seasoned my meat beforehand.

      I can confirm that it is very effective at conferring saltiness.

  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
    0·
    8 days ago

    Try it, and report back. If you don’t report back, we’ll assume you’re dead, and divide up your collection of POGs.

  • Sludgehammer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    8 days ago

    In my (relatively uninformed) opinion, mostly yes, but kinda no.

    While a salt lamp is made of mined salt they’re usually made of a lower grade of salt than the stuff that ends up for food use, so you’d probably end up with some unpleasant “dirt” flavors in the salt. However, more importantly most salt lamps I’ve seen have been varnished, since raw salt will absorb moisture from the air and melt into brine. So you’d also be consuming a lot of whatever they used to give the lamp a moisture proof coating and I don’t know how food safe that is.

  • TIEPilot@lemmy.world
    0·
    8 days ago

    If you have no other options I’m sure it would be fine if you wash off the outer part just for safety. In reality I bet its cheaper to buy pink salt off the jungle site.

        • TIEPilot@lemmy.world
          0·
          8 days ago

          Oh another great point, never considered they would varnish it. Makes sense as salt can easily break up so for shipping it would track

      • TIEPilot@lemmy.world
        0·
        8 days ago

        Lead contamination or other heavy metals (chromium freaks me out). I wasn’t too worried about pathogens/virus/bacteria/fungus as like you say its salt. Its been a preservative for 1000’s of years :)

  • Doom@lemmy.world
    0·
    8 days ago

    I wouldn’t. While yes, it is technically salt, it isn’t food grade. You could have a safe to eat lamp OR a lamp contaminated with toxins or heavy metals or radiation. And that’s before whatever processes may have been done during manufacturing to turn it into a lamp. Not to mention if it’s been sitting out it’ll be covered in dirt and dust which is also not great in food (not dangerous, but not enjoyable either).

    • quick_snail@feddit.nl
      0·
      7 days ago

      My nightly routine: read, masturbate, and always lick the salt lamp before turning it off

      It brings bad luck if you don’t lick the lamp before turning it off.

      • BobbyNevada@discuss.tchncs.de
        0·
        7 days ago

        Nothing that crazy. I was thinking like using a turkey fryer to make a super saturated salt solution. Then set it up to form salt rock crystals. We did it with Epson salt in high school, but pink Himalayan salt should do it, right? I just never got around to it.

  • mlg@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    8 days ago

    Yes, they come from the same mine in Pakistan. They process it into lamps, animal licks, rock salt, fine salt, etc from the same source.

    Just clean the surface with a wet cloth to ensure there’s no residual dust/debris and you can shave away. It probably won’t yield even size grains, but you can use it for whatever you like.

    it’s more for a joke example though, much easier to just buy the salt.

    That all being said, the ones from Pakistan are not usually coated in anything after raw production, so if its from an unknown source, you might want to check if the seller maybe added some spray on agent to protect the salt, although I really don’t see any reason why they would do that.

    spoiler

    And don’t buy any pink salt that says “made in India”. That money essentially funds some PMLN crooks who thought it would be funny to kneecap Pakistan’s agriculture export market by banning sales to any broker except themselves, of which they heavily undersell to India who then makes profit and shares it back only with them.

    EDIT: For everyone saying “not food grade”, the only difference is that it wasn’t quality tested for ingestion. That doesn’t mean the salt isn’t edible, it’s just not tested for that purpose. The mined salt rocks are the same for everything, only difference is size to be sold to each factory. I checked and apparently some sellers do coat the lamps with a protective gel for shipping purposes, so you would want to wash that off first.

    • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      7 days ago

      the seller maybe added some spray on agent to protect the salt, although I really don’t see any reason why they would do that

      i had a friend whose salt lamp either dissolved or evaporated. she swears she never saw her cats lick it, but c’mon dude.

    • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
      0·
      8 days ago

      That article is LLM generated. A third of the way into the article and without any human sense of self-awareness or irony it says:

      Let’s get straight to it—are salt lamps edible?

      That’s an em dash, notoriously something LLMs use. Then after that there are dot pointed lists and tables. Again, indicators of an LLM generated article.