Yet other sources do, in fact, enumerate the positive properties of salt:
Enhancing Flavor
A. Salt enhances the flavor of food, as Job says:
Shall that which has no flavor be eaten without salt... (Job 6:6)
Salt is the most basic of the spices used to enhance the flavor of food.
Preservation
B. Salt is a preservative and does not spoil. The following midrash views this as the reason Lot’s wife became a pillar of salt:
“He has made a memorial for his wondrous works” (Ps. 111:4), and even when He overturned Sodom; He left a memorial – “And his wife looked behind him and she became a pillar of salt,” and until this day the pillar of salt stands there... (Sifre DeAggadeta on Esther, Midrash Panim Acherim ver. 2, parasha 5)
According to this midrash, the term “a pillar of salt” refers to a memorial made of salt. In contrast to ibn Ezra’s explanation quoted above, here Lot’s wife becoming a pillar of salt not only prevents her from being saved; she actually becomes a memorial for the entire destruction. Salt lasts forever, and thus the pillar of salt will forever stand as testimony to Sodom’s destruction. This midrash attests to another positive quality of salt: it lasts forever.
Not only that, but it can even be used to prevent other foods from spoiling. Vegetables, meat and fish, which naturally spoil quickly, can be pickled in salt and preserved for long periods.
Strengthening the Skin
C. Another positive property of salt is its ability to strengthen and toughen the skin: it has been used both for treating the delicate skin of babies and for processing animal hides.
