Abstract
BackgroundThis article reports on the use of domestic or table salt for its perceived health effects and healing properties in a Latino farmworker community. It explores how contemporary salt usage beliefs can be seen to have roots in long-standing humoral theories of medicine and health.MethodsThis qualitative investigation comprised 30 in-depth individual interviews and five focus groups conducted in Spanish with Mexican and Central American immigrants in one small city in California’s Central Valley (N = 61 total participants). Interviews and focus groups were audiotaped, translated into English and transcribed. Several researchers independently and iteratively read transcripts, developed and applied codes, and engaged in thematic analysis.ResultsStrongly emergent themes identified the importance of balance in health, and beliefs about the effects on salt on health. Valued for its culinary role, for bringing out the flavors in food, and used by people of all ages, salt use is part of a robust set of cultural practices. Salt was regularly mixed with foods in different combinations and ingested to restore balance, prevent disequilibrium or reduce vulnerability to diverse illnesses, promote rehydration, and address symptoms of exposure to extremes of temperature or physical or emotional stress. Statements made and practices engaged in by participants were highly suggestive of health and healing beliefs common to humoral belief systems based primarily on a hot-cold dichotomy in classifications of foods and healing behaviors. We evaluate these statements and practices in the context of the existing literature on historical and contemporary humoral beliefs in Latin American communities, in Mexico and Central America, and in the United States.ConclusionHumoral theory is a useful framework for understanding contemporary rural Latino migrant farmworkers’ perceptions of the importance of salt for their health.
Highlights
This article reports on the use of domestic or table salt for its perceived health effects and healing properties in a Latino farmworker community
We show contemporary salt use beliefs and practices are influenced by humoral beliefs that rural field and factory workers’ employ to manage occupational exposures, work endurance and health, in conditions of unrelenting and uncontrollable daily stresses and extreme heat
Many ideas and practices long-associated with humoral medicine in Mexican and Central American contexts are present in this contemporary Latino farmworker community in California’s Central Valley
Summary
This article reports on the use of domestic or table salt for its perceived health effects and healing properties in a Latino farmworker community It explores how contemporary salt usage beliefs can be seen to have roots in long-standing humoral theories of medicine and health. We begin by presenting a truncated history of work on salt use and humoral pathology and therapeutics in pre-Conquest Mayan and Aztec times, and in more recent Latin American especially Mexican contexts from the mid-20th Century on. This background section is followed by a brief description of our study’s background, location and methods, and presentation of results. We conclude that many of the ideas and practices of humoral medicine are present in this contemporary Latino community and inform the material and symbolic use of salt as a culinary and therapeutic agent
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