I picked up, among other things, a new box (Or is it a can? It’s a cardboard cylinder.) of salt at the supermarket. After I got it home, I noticed the label warned that it “does not supply iodide, a necessary nutrient”. My last box/can of salt was iodized. Do I really need iodized salt, or can I just stick with what I’ve got?
It is not likely that you will develop an iodine deficiency during the period of time that you use a single box of salt. It might not be necessary at all for you, if you eat ocean fish, or seaweed, or live in an area where iodine is present in the soil, and the normal vegetable produce you eat also has iodine.
The main problem in iodine deficiency is that if it is not present in your soil, you cannot get it from any local dietary source at all. The iodine content of many soils was greatly depleted during the ice ages of the last two hundred thousand years, and will not be replenished in less than geologic time scales. With imported sea food, or vegetables grown in iodine rich soils (almost impossible to judge, as a consumer) the problem is easily solved.
So, since you live on Monster Island, and have near by sources of fish and other ocean food products, you can ignore the need for iodized salt. Or, at least for one box of salt, anyway.
Tris
“The difference between a violin and a viola is that a viola burns longer.” ~ Victor Borge ~
Does that mean that indigenous peoples who lived in areas without iodine had chronic iodine defficiency problems? Did they adapt, deal with it, or just move to a better area?
The trouble is, our seafood tends to come in the form of fire-breathing serpents and 100 meter tall bipedal lobsters, so they’re a little hard to catch.
Iodine deficiency is believed to cause an increase in rates of cretinism:
I read an article in the New York Times a few years ago about a region in the interior of China where there was no seafood, no iodine in the soil, and no iodized salt. The villagers there had incredibly high rates of cretinism (at least one in every family, on average), and most people eventually developed goiter. This being China, they couldn’t move without government permission, and I don’t think the government was providing them with iodized salt, either.
Historically, for Europeans the Swiss were noted for a higher than average proportion of cretinism. High up, eroded, away from the seas.
I love that so many people still talk about “local soils” etc. The percentage of food that comes from nearby locations is usually very small for most Americans and other first world people. I’ve been eating grapes from Chile for example. You’d have to have a very peculiar diet (only eating stuff obtained from your local farmers market) and be living in the “wrong” area to have any risk of having a iodine deficiency.
Iodized salt is for all practical purposes not necessary. Jet Jaguar is in the clear and then some.
Nevertheless, iodine has one of the smallest dietary requirements and some of the worst deficiency effects, so if you’re going to buy salt and the iodized doesn’t cost significantly more, you may as well get it.
At this stage I should note the SD column, Should I completely eliminate salt from my diet?
A tiny amount indeed.
I had a G/F who was raising money as part of a “Key Club” program to provide iodized salt for people in inland China. Goiters are one of the more attractive effects of this defficiency.
Larry Niven wrote a book about a colonized planet with extremely stratified mineral sources and how iodine was used to create a water empire. “Destiny’s Road” is the name and while not Niven’s best work (abrupt name changes withing the context of the story make it hard to follow at times) it is on topic here and he is pretty meticulous with his reasearch most of the time.
zen101, wasn’t it potassium that was lacking in most of the colony’s diet?
pugluvr: Crap, you may be right but I thought it was a general lack of minerals and potassium was among them. Plus the way people got “slow” when they didn’t get speckles. Does potassium defficiency make one retarded? I recall how Destiny life was filling and tasty but not at all nutricious.
I knew I’d read this somewhere – it’s an article from Salon about a group in India that is (or was, things may have changed) refusing to allow iodine treatment of salt.
http://dir.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/08/20/salt/index.html
This is a link to Columbia’s proclamation on getting iodized salt to our sister city - http://salt.coin.org/proclamation.htm
There’s an ongoing salt drive for Kutaisi, too.
Is salt in canned or frozen dinners iodized? I NEVER put any salt on my food. I always figured I got enuff by eating canned or frozen food.
I was about to ask the same question. I rarely use salt myself, usually only if I’m following a recipe for something that calls for salt. The last box-can of salt I bought has probably lasted me about 5 years, and I expect the new one to last the same amount of time.
But then, a 2-lb box-can of salt only costs about 50 cents, so it’s no big deal if I should get another one.
http://ia.essortment.com/vitaminsmineral_rvkv.htm
It can cause “dizziness and mental confusion”, as well as irregular heartbeat and other neuromuscular problems. The “everyone gradually gets stupid” symptoms in Niven’s book were way off.
Isn’t “cretinism” an obsolete term? It sounds to me as bad as referring to a person with Downs syndrome as a “mongoloid”. What’s the more modern term for this condition?
I believe cretin is still an accepted medical term for someone afflicted with the aftereffects of lack of iodine. But then some proper medical terms have become non-PC
An IDIOT is a person without understanding or ordinary mental capacity, one who does not advance beyond the mental age of three years; distinguished from an imbecile, who is capable of some mental and physical education.
An IMBECILE is one who is congenitally weak-minded yet not incapable of education; a mental defective not advancing beyond the mental age of seven years.
A MORON is a feeble-minded person of higher grade than am imbecile, one who does not advance beyond the mental age of 12 years
BTW, I think “mongoloid” got the bad rap as it identified a medical syndrome involving retardation with a particular ethnic group. “Cretin” doesn’t do that.