Iodine deficiency is often seen as a problem of the past, but this isn’t entirely true. During the 20th century, the iodization of salt became one of the most effective public health interventions for preventing conditions caused by a lack of this mineral, including goiter (enlargement of the thyroid gland) and preventable damage to neurological development.
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Stop with the “sea salt”. Start using iodized salt again. Damn. It’s as simple as that.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t sea salt and most sea foods contain a good amount of iodine? Or is there a fake sea salt
Not whether or not it contains it it’s about whether or not the contents are of a high enough concentration…
Natural sea salt doesn’t have enough. You’re right that it needs to be added, and it really doesn’t take much. We’re talking 150 micrograms per person per day.
And for people who know chemistry, micrograms of something as atomically heavy as iodine is a miniscule amount of a compound… If you had a chunk of physical iodine you could see with your naked eyes, it would probably be enough for 1-3 months of healthy iodine intake.
Depends on your nation probably? In my home country of Canada it doesn’t matter where salt comes from it needs to be iodized by law iirc. The exception to this is pickling salt since iodine is a problem for pickling and canning apparently
Edit: sea foods are much higher in iodine. A can of sardines will have multiple times your daily intake of iodine in one can.
Interesting. Iodine was a thing my grandmother loved a lot. She’d go on about food additives and how amazing iodine salt was because she remembered how everyone where she’d live would have goiters. Then iodine salt and boom! No. And much less scurvy and stuff. I think she was always hopeful food science would get to the point of all vitamins inside everything somehow lol.
No matter your diet, get your blood checked once in a while guys and gals. If you know your deficiency it is very easy to correct.
In a way, iodized salt has an image problem.
No, it has a flavor problem. It tastes bad, which detracts from the saltiness and flavor of iodized salt. However, it turns out the food naturally richest in iodine is seaweed, which works out great for vegans and vegetarians.
In blind taste tests people can not identify iodized salt
Yeah, I didn’t know iodized salt has a flavor issue, either. I’ve never heard of this before.
“People” eat McDonald’s french fries and add white sugar to weak coffee. Their palates are overwhelmed with refined salt and sweet. Iodized salt is chemically refined to iodine and sodium chloride, same as white sugar is refined down to sucrose, and high fructose corn syrup is refined to fructose and glucose, stripping out the flavor of the location, sugar cane, and corn, respectively. That’s great for manufacturing, just like the Red Delicious apple and bland reddish tomato. So yes, “people” can’t tell the difference between salts, and that’s unfortunate.
Literal professional cooks can’t tell the difference…
If that’s true, let’s name names. I’ll start: here’s Wolfgang Puck on Masterclass.
“Wolfgang says. “Now, you have so many different salts, even smoked salts, for example. If you want to roast or barbecue something, put a little smoked salt on it. What I use all the time is great sea salt or fleur de sel. I never use iodized salt because iodized salt is not good for you and has no flavor. Good salt has a lot of flavor.”” https://www.masterclass.com/articles/wolfgang-puck-on-seasoning-food
smoked salt
great sea salt or fleur de sel
Those salts very distinctly are not pure NaCl. For example according to Wikipedia, fleur de sel is 0.4% magnesium, 0.2% potassium, 0.1% calcium by dry weight. (For comparison, iodized salt tends to have 25mg/kg of iodine, so… 0.0025%?)
That’s right. Their impurities and the essence of smoke and sea provide flavor beyond the taste of salt. They are not refined, purified, deprived of flavor, and infused with iodine. You know why iodine is added to salt? Because people literally need to take it with a grain of salt.
So we agree?
Pure, refined NaCl tastes the same as pure, refined NaCl with that amount of iodine added.
Smoked salt tastes the same as smoked salt with that amount of iodine added (if such exists?)
Fleur de sel would taste the same as fleur de sel with that amount of iodine added, if someone would make such a thing.
?
I prefer lovage salt to pure salt for lots of purposes too, that’s got nothing to do with anything iodine.
I don’t think seaweed is the microplastic source we should be fixating on:
Recent studies have found microplastics in bottled water (Gambino et al., 2022), food and agricultural products (He et al., 2021), beet sugar (Yurtsever and Cüvelek, 2024), takeout food containers (Du et al., 2020), beverages (Jin et al., 2021), and seafood (Garrido Gamarro et al., 2020; Al Mamun et al., 2023). Seafood is one among the primary sources through which humans can accumulate microplastics (Smith et al., 2018)
Since most animals eat plants, almost any problem you have at the plant level compounds or worsens at the animal level. Fish and “seafood” are the typical animal source of iodine, but they either eat algae, filter feed or eat animals who filter feed, so the microplastics accumulate. Generally, the lower down the food chain you eat, the fewer microplastics/heavy metals you’ll get.
About other animal based sources, land animals are not magical iodine producers, they also need to get it from their diet like us and are usually supplemented iodine. Just use some iodized salt for cooking, idk if it has different concentrations in the US but I’ve never heard a single person saying it tastes bad. Or eat some seaweed, the iodine is incredibly concentrated anyway and it probably has fewer microplastics than other dietary sources.
Source is Wikipedia:
The production of ethylenediamine dihydroiodide, provided as a nutritional supplement for livestock, consumes a large portion of available iodine
True, avoid meat, or at least land meat! I do promote a pescatarian diet whenever possible.
FYI the title is true for vegans and anyone outside of the US because the main source of iodine is from the cleaning liquid used on dairy equipment in the US that gets into the milk. Since this is not common everywhere you should consume iodized salt or take a supplement.
Just eat seaweed snacks or sushi with seaweed. Iodized salt tastes bitter, which is why chefs avoid it.
No. Chefs use kosher salt because it is finer and is easier to measure and distribute through a dish not because iodized salt has a taste.
So the lactose intolerant are right up there? Greaaat. Any sources on this?
Galton et al. (1984) and Rasmussen, Galton and Peterson (1991)
But just google where the iodine in milk comes from.
Iodised salt
