My intrusive thoughts need to know.

  • Sludgehammer@lemmy.world
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    1 hour 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.

    • TAG@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      Since this is “no stupid questions”, I will follow up with a question and demand that you not call me stupid: what about the lamp makes it “not food grade”? I assume that both salts are just NaCl, so do salt manufacturers put the salt through some process to remove dangerous contaminants or something?

      • ThoGot@feddit.org
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        8 minutes ago

        Food is regularly tested for any poisonous/harmful contaminats. I would assume lamps don’t undergo the same quality control

  • WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world
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    7 hours 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.social
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      1 hour 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.

  • pitaya@lemmy.zip
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    7 hours ago

    Sure, as long as you avoid the bulb, but it is probably contaminated with a variety of heavy metals.

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 hours ago

      Someone gave me one as a gift when I lived on the Florida coast and I had to throw it away because it wicks up all the humidity and then leaks it onto whatever surface you have it on. Shit electronics sitting in puddles didn’t seem like a good idea.

  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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    7 hours 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.

    • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
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      7 hours 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’s a lot of dot pointed lists and tables. Again, indicators of an LLM generated article.

  • TIEPilot@lemmy.world
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    7 hours 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.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      It’s salt. What sort of pathogen is capable of living on it to begin with?

      Edit: I guess the concern would more likely be some kind of chemical contaminant from the mining process, which I suppose could be helped by washing.

      • TIEPilot@lemmy.world
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        4 hours 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 :)

        • TIEPilot@lemmy.world
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          4 hours 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