Oryx Desert Salt / Hydration From Ancient Underground Lake | Samantha Skyring
Fell Into Food PodcastShow Notes
Samantha Skyring is the founder and CEO of Oryx Desert Salt, a mineral-rich salt sourced from an ancient underground lake beneath Africa's Kalahari Desert — now stocked by Whole Foods and Woolworths, served in more than 3,500 restaurants, and supplied to JetBlue Airlines. We get into desert salt versus sea salt, the sodium and hydration science most people get backwards, and what's actually sitting in the "natural" sea salt in your pantry.
This one starts with Samantha walking 75 miles across the Skeleton Coast in Namibia in her twenties — the trip that put her face-to-face with the oryx antelope the brand is named after — and gets a lot more intense from there. Fifteen years ago, with a toddler to care for and no guarantee any of it would sell, she sold her house, bought 34 tonnes of desert salt, stored it in a garage unit, and started bottling it herself at her dining room table. That's how Oryx Desert Salt began. She'll also tell you, on tape, that table salt was invented as an industrial product around 1910 for paint and textiles, and that the chemicals added to make it "flow freely" are still in the shaker on your table today.
We cover what's actually harvested out of the ocean when a bag says "sea salt" — plastics, sewage, and in some cases radioactive waste from decades-old ocean dumping. Samantha walks through why sodium and hydration are more connected than most people realize, why she thinks "salt is bad for you" might be one of the more persistent food myths out there, and how she landed a national Whole Foods listing off three cold emails to a category buyer. We also get into the plastic-free, ceramic-mechanism grinder that kept over 894,500 plastic grinders out of landfill in 2024 alone.
Website: https://oryxdesertsalt.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/oryxdesertsalt/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oryxdesertsalt/?hl=en Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@oryxdesertsalt4081
Oryx Desert Salt can be found at Amazon Whole Foods Direct on website
CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS 00:00 — Cold open: the five-month desert journey that started it all 01:18 — What Oryx Desert Salt is, and why an antelope is the logo 05:42 — She sold her house to buy 34 tons of desert salt 06:25 — Inside the Kalahari salt pan: 55 million tons, bigger than Texas 10:00 — What's actually in your sea salt (plastics, sewage, radioactive waste) 12:27 — Table salt's origin story: an industrial product from 1910 17:15 — "Salt is bad for you" — dismantling the biggest nutrition myth on the planet 26:26 — How she landed a national Whole Foods listing with three emails 32:15 — Getting on JetBlue and Amtrak 37:12 — The "tequila fist" taste test and what chefs are saying
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