The Wolfe Howls Nonsense

A plea to think.

When it comes to whole cloth nonsense, one can think of few better examples than David Wolfe. His fear mongering pseudoscience dupes people into believing the most outrageous of claims. It is scary to think that a man who actually believes that without salt being in water it would just ‘float away’. Of course anyone with a primary school education could understand that this is absolutely demonstrable nonsense, but what makes it so that people are drawn to the nonsense this man spews? David Wolfe engages in what’s called pleading to emotion, he makes claims that draws gullible people’s wishful thinking and allows them to believe the completely outrageous things Mr. Wolfe claims. Let’s dissect one of his videos and expose the plethora of nonsense he spouts off shall we? 

First lets start off about this Himalayan salt the camera man mentions passively. David Wolfe actually sells various types of exotic salts to which he attributes all kinds of medicinal properties to, all unfounded of course as we will point out.

Now lets talk about the next thing Mr. Wolfe brings up, Bromine. Bromine is necessary for tissue development and is used preferentially over chlorine by one antiparasitic enzyme in the human immune system. Free bromine does not occur in nature, but occurs as colorless soluble crystalline mineral halide salts, analogous to table salt. Bromine is rarer than about three-quarters of elements in the Earth’s crust. So Mr. Wolfe’s claim about bromine couldn’t be more unfounded!

As for drinking sea water, human kidneys can only make urine that is less salty than salt water. Therefore, to get rid of all the excess salt taken in by drinking sea water, you have to urinate more water than you drank. Eventually, you die of dehydration even as you become thirstier. Sea water is extremely tough on your kidneys and is most defiantly not recommended for drinking.  

But according to Mr. Wolfe sea salts should be avoided and then makes some obscure reference to how dolphins can drink salt water only because they can filter out bromine. We at AAPN couldn’t figure out where he came up with this idea since sea mammals typically get their water through the metabolic breakdown of their food. Sea mammals seldom drink sea water since it would take more water to push out the salt then they could ingest, no different than in humans.

As for Mr. Wolfe’s outlandish claim of “without salt, water would just float off into the heavens.” There are two factors that prevent this, one being gravity (Duh!) and two being what is known as the hydrogen bond in water. A hydrogen Bond is a weak bond between two molecules resulting from an electrostatic attraction between a proton in one molecule and an electronegative atom in the other. This is the action that makes water and other associated liquids form into well, liquids. Although salt can most definitely increase density, it doesn’t inhibit evaporation to the extent that Mr. Wolfe alleges to.

As for Mr. Wolfe’s salary reference, Roman historian Pliny the Elder did state as an aside in his Natural History’s discussion of sea water, that “In Rome, the soldier’s pay was originally salt and the word salary derives from it…”. More modern sources maintain instead that although Roman soldiers were typically paid in coin, the word salarium is derived from the word sal (salt) because at some point a soldier’s salary may have been an allowance for the purchase of salt or the price of having soldiers conquer salt supplies and guard the Salt Roads (Via Salaria) that led to Rome. So this little remark is more of a half truth than being completely accurate.

Towards the end of the video he goes completely off the deep end by attributing ‘spiritual influences’  and woo to each type of salt he sells. This is the point that anyone with an ounce of critical thinking skills would be able to smell ‘BS’ and be on their way. “Don’t Cry Wolfe”.

-AAPN

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salary

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-can-sea-mammals-drink/