Terra Editorial is the writing arm of Terra, a non-profit research collective. Our work documents traditional African pastoral health practices, metabolic health research, and the science of terrain restoration. All content is informed by fieldwork, expert interviews, and documented results.
The University of Guelph has analyzed salt samples collected by Terra. Dr. Sarah Chen, a food scientist in the Department of Food Science, led the analysis. Her research focuses on traditional food systems and their scientific documentation. The collaboration was a natural fit.
Grace tested her saliva every morning for eleven months. She would tear off a small strip of paper, touch it to her tongue, and wait sixty seconds for the color to change. Yellow meant acidic. Green meant alkaline. Acidic meant disease. Alkaline meant health.
Her strips always turned yellow.
"Why do I need to rotate the salts? Why can't I just pick one and stick with it?"
It is the question we hear most often in the Terrain Repair foundational program. The question makes sense. The salts we source, Baleni Spring Salt from South Africa, Omo River Plant Ash Salt from Ethiopia, and Black Salt from Boke in southern Ethiopia, are each remarkable in their own right. Each contains a full spectrum of minerals. Each has its own distinct profile. Each, on its own, can restore what the fast has depleted.
So why rotate?
Jane Wambui's kitchen in South B, Nairobi, looks like a health food store that has exploded.
There are jars of moringa powder from a company that promised "100 percent organic, pure Kenyan superfood." There are turmeric capsules with pictures of smiling yogis on the label. There is spirulina from a multi-level marketing company her friend convinced her to join. There is maca root from Peru, ashwagandha from India, and something called "black seed oil" that cost her four thousand shillings for a bottle the size of her thumb.
There is a question we hear often from participants in our Mineral Priming Program: is all broth the same? The answer, we have learned over five years of research, is no. The medicine that comes from an animal's bones is a direct reflection of what that animal ate over its lifetime. And what an animal eats depends entirely on where it lived.