Food for health #4
Check out your salt: it should be iodized, it’s important.
There’s an expression in French, “crétin des Alpes”: “idiots from the Alps”. I discovered it’s not a funny invented insult; it’s a genetic problem of iodine-deficient soils of the Swiss and Jura Alps.
In the beginning of the century, we could find a very high concentration of those “idiots” and goitrous (people with swelling of the thyroid, causing an impressive anterior swelling of the throat) in those areas. In the 50’s, a doctor linked it to iodine-deficiency and its pathologies.
That’s how, in 1952, we decided to enrich salt with iodine; there’s nearly no iodine in natural salt. This way, we got a daily and reasoned iodine intake to end the deficiencies.
Iodine deficiency is the major preventable cause of mental retardation.
Today, WHO and UNICEF recommend universal iodization of salt because two million people still suffer from iodine deficiency. It’s also the major preventable cause of mental retardation.
As to the French Salines Committee (FSC), pregnant women in late pregnancy and adolescent women are the most at risk.
Salt warnings
According to World Health Organization, more than 5 gr of salt a day (about 5 pinches) can create high blood pressure problems and therefore important heart problems.
It should also be noted that industrial meals include 6 gr of salt in average. And food manufacturers are not allowed to put iodized salt in the meals they sell; some people are badly allergic to iodine. So long live home made food!
The discrete disparition of iodized salt
I checked out my cupboards and discovered that I didn’t have any iodized salt. But a lot of different ones: natural salt from Guérande, Himalayan rose salt, flower of salt, and little condiments of thin and white salt, all without iodine. And that for years, disaster! When I was young, there was only iodine salt, and iodine was written in huge letters.
According to the Swiss Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office, the “super” special salts (super expansive) like the ones from Guérande or Himalaya don’t have any health benefit compared to the normal ones (sadly, the report is only in French, Italian and German).
I used the Ngram viewer from Google to get an idea of the importance we give to iodized salt through time; the Ngram viewer counts every time a word has been used in the books published between two dates. It decreased strongly in 1960 and slowly since then. Important: that doesn’t say anything about the evolution of the quantity of iodized salt sells. However, according to the FSC, the share of iodized salt in the total salt sells decreased from 40% in 2005 to 30% in 2012.
I compared that idea to the evolution of thyroid problems in the global literature. Here’s what you get:
Maybe it’s linked, that doesn’t prove anything but opens a path for research. One sometimes links thyroid problems with Tchernobyl, but as we can see the subject started to rise before 1986.
Conclusion
Don’t eat much salt, don’t pay for expansive useless special salt, but take it iodized.
Be careful: too much iodine has the same negative impact on your health. The quantity in the iodized salt is completely sufficient. Don’t mix it with other sources of iodine, like pills or iodized milk.
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