US Gained a Decade of Flynn-Effect IQ Points After Adding Iodine To Salt 270
cold fjord writes "I wish it was always this easy. Business Insider reports, 'Iodized salt is so ubiquitous that we barely notice it. Few people know why it even exists. Iodine deficiency remains the world's leading cause of preventable mental retardation. According to a new study (abstract), its introduction in America in 1924 had an effect so profound that it raised the country's IQ. A new NBER working paper from James Feyrer, Dimitra Politi, and David N. Weil finds that the population in iodine-deficient areas saw IQs rise by a full standard deviation, which is 15 points, after iodized salt was introduced.... The mental impacts were unknown, the program was started to fight goiter, so these effects were an extremely fortunate, unintended side effect.'"
The question you are all asking... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The question you are all asking... (Score:5, Funny)
I wasn't asking it as I've been taking my iodized salt.
Re:The question you are all asking... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The question you are all asking... (Score:4, Interesting)
On a more serious note....many of us who enjoy cooking, avoid iodized salt due to the taste encroachment.
I cook almost exclusively with kosher salt, both for the grain size and for lack of iodine.
I cook from scratch...so, hoping that I get my iodine from natural sources. I live near the gulf, so I eat a good bit of sea food, which helps.
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The Flynn effect has to do with the effect swash buckling has on women, duh.
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The Flynn effect has to do with the effect swash buckling has on women, duh.
Presumably that's where the expression "in like Flynn" comes from.
Re: The question you are all asking... (Score:4, Informative)
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The movies in question are well worth a look if you like the whole Bond genre, even funnier if you've watched and enjoyed Hudson Hawk [imdb.com]. The two movies were Our Man Flint [imdb.com] and In Like Flint [imdb.com].
Re: The question you are all asking... (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The question you are all asking... (Score:4, Funny)
Lies.
Sincerely,
Master Control Program
Unfortunately... (Score:5, Funny)
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General Ripper, is that you?
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flouride
Ah, Muphry's Law [wikipedia.org]. Still all-powerful.
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You're guest is as well as mein.
But now people in the US try to avoid it (Score:5, Insightful)
And now we've got people in the US trying to avoid "iodized salt" because it's a "processed food" and they want "natural mineral salts". Of course they don't even know why salt is iodized -- they think it's a "preservative" (you know, cause salt goes bad) or somesuch -- and while they might be getting enough iodine elsewhere they certainly aren't regulating their intake to ensure as much. It's almost as bad as the folks who want "pectin-free" jam.
Salt in Food is Ubiquitous in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
I try to avoid salt when possible because so much food is overloaded with it, so I'm a little over the daily recommended value instead of double of it.
Salt isn't just a preservative but a way to make lesser-quality food taste better, so the market gives a financial incentive to salt up everything.
Re:Salt in Food is Ubiquitous in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a valid concern, but another part of it is that iodized salt isn't usually what they're using in processed foods. So, not only do you get tons of salt, but it doesn't even have the trace minerals that would benefit you.
And yes, the main reason that salt is in so many foods is because it increases appetite and enhances flavor.
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It's not that bad. It's really only a gram and a half.
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Re:Salt in Food is Ubiquitous in the US (Score:5, Informative)
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. . . so don't use the salt, and just take iodine . . . straight up, or on the rocks . . .
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I knew when I was a kid that the iodine was added for thyroid health. I remember asking my Dad about it after sitting at the table one day staring at the little girl in the raincoat on the Morton salt box. He grew up in the 30's so I guess they heard about it back then.
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so they use sea salt instead, what's the problem?
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I live in Ohio (right in the middle of the goiter belt) and I don't buy iodized salt. I just buy the bulk-packed sea salt that my local coffee house sells for cheap -- not because it doesn't have iodine added to it, but because it tastes better to me.
But that doesn't even matter, because I only add salt to things where it is useful.
I toss some in when cooking pasta, or cooking down onions or other vegetables, or making pickles, and that's really about it. There is no salt shaker on the dining room table.
I
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Salt is an ingredient whose apparent strength depends strongly on how acclimated you are to it. So if you don't use much salt, it doesn't take much for food to taste like nothing but salt, but if you use a fair bit then you need a fair bit or food tastes bland.
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I suppose that makes sense.
Perhaps salt is like capsaicin or alcohol in this way: People around me cringe when I load up a baked potato with some sour cream, shredded cheese, and an entire finely-chopped fresh ghost pepper. To me, it's quite warm, b
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You preach to the choir, AC. Perhaps you should have read what I wrote: I'm not avoiding sodium or iodine, I'm avoiding salt. There's lots of edible salts out there...
And I don't care if salt [is/is not] bad for me. I just don't particul
Re: But now people in the US try to avoid it (Score:3)
I have had an aversion to unnecessary salt for as long as I can remember, so it's not a new thing to me. I don't have anything to compare to.
But generally, yeah: I find food at restaurants to be pretty salty compared to the stuff I make at home.
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It is not. You know what food contains half the iodine you need in a day. A potato. Each one real baked potato a day, maybe a glass of milk if you so desire, include some sea salt, which does contain natural iodine along with other trace minerals. In fact mined salt also contains trace minerals, but they are removed, and then the iodine in added back in, albeit in higher quantities.
Re:But now people in the US try to avoid it (Score:4, Funny)
You haven't been taking your iodine, have you?
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1) What was said was not an analogy.
2) The fact that pectin is part of fruit is the point. That's why the anti-iodized salt people aren't as bad as the people that don't want pectin in their jam.
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Yes actually it is part of salt, table salt or sea salt are complex mixtures of primarily sodium, potassium and calcium halide salts those halides are primarily chlorides, fluorides, iodides. Mid-western soils are iodine depleted so we need more iodine than is naturally in the salt to make up the difference.
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that's not tricky at all, not even an ethical dilemma - children have rights of their own, completely independent of their parents. they are not the property of their parents, they are not chattels.
if a child's parents are neglecting them (by withholding nutrition or medical treatment) or abusing their rights in other ways, then the state has a duty to step in and uphold the rights of the child.
Not the only public health benefit. (Score:5, Informative)
Simply meeting the basic needs of the general public brings huge gains.
There used to be a stereotype that all southerners were lazy and terrible workers. Turns out they were really just riddled with parasites (That train your energy and make you tired) Basic sanitation (Even things a simple as proper outhouses dug deep enough) solved that problem amazingly well. Many poor nations struggle with this problem today, however.
The Army started school lunch programs because malnourished children were growing up stunted and short (among other health problems), and made for awful soldiers.
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There used to be a stereotype that all southerners were lazy and terrible workers. Turns out they were really just riddled with parasites.
What kind of parasites, and why did they have more of them than damnyankees? Serious question.
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Re:Not the only public health benefit. (Score:5, Informative)
What kind of parasites, and why did they have more of them than damnyankees? Serious question.
A number of energy and grown sapping diseases, such as malaria and yellow fever, were common in the American South in the 19th century, but uncommon in the North. But the biggest culprit was probably hookworms [wikipedia.org], which cause "intellectual, cognitive and growth retardation". Average IQ in the South increased significantly as hookworms were eradicated in the early 20th century.
We might get another gain if we eradicate toxoplasmosis [wikipedia.org], a parasite spread by cats. It is believed by some to depress intelligence and novelty seeking behavior in humans.
Re:Not the only public health benefit. (Score:5, Informative)
Digging through the soil? (Score:3)
The way I heard it was that it was the use of untreated fertilizer in the fields and gardens that was the primary cause of the infections.
I suppose, sitting barefoot in an outhouse with no floor, that the hookworms working their way up from the pit could be a contributive factor.
But, shoes, yes. One of the reasons for the tradition of wooden geta in Japan was the general use of untreated (human) fertilizer in the rice paddies. The tradition of taking the shoes off on entering the house was also in no small
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Some observations about Iodine (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of people in the US live in the so-called Goiter Belt [blogspot.com], which is a band of the northernmost state (or two) of the US. Roughly speaking, the other states were once a vast inland ocean swamp, so the soil become infused with Iodine form the ocean. This gets into the water supply, with the result that Northern residents have far less Iodine in their diet than southern states.
Another source of Iodine used to be bread - Iodine was used as a dough conditioner in bread, so a little bit got into the food chain that way. Some of the effect we're seeing might also be due to the rise of manufactured bread in the US.
More recently, however, bread makers have started using Bromine instead of Iodine. Bromine binds to Iodine receptors so not only are we no longer getting Iodine from bread, we're less able to process the Iodine we do get.
There's also the question of how much Iodine we need to be healthy. There's good evidence for the minimum amount to prevent disease, but that may (and for those of you in the medical community, note that I'm saying "may") be lower than the optimum amount.
Note that doctors will tell you that 150ug is the maximum Iodine you should ever take (more would be toxic!) and yet occasionally use Iodine to enhance contrast [wikipedia.org] in radiological studies, which puts as much as 20 mg in the blood stream. The RDA value is 100x less than used by doctors in some studies studies [drmyhill.co.uk] to treat disease.
There's also disagreement [food.gov.uk] as to what the minimum daily intake should be.
We really should be studying these things. Unfortunately, a supplement that anyone could buy which will clear a patient's symptoms is incompatible with an expensive FDA-tested drug that requires office visits to administer. The medical community won't make money on supplements, so they aren't studied very well. There's enormous economic pressure against research into health (as opposed to research into disease).
Re:Some observations about Iodine (Score:5, Interesting)
Did you see the goiter rate charts in the article? I found them astonishing.
I was also surprised by the low rates in Oklahoma and New Mexico. I wonder if that is because they were getting their salt from Texas? Texas did have a very low rate.
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No, the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) is not intended as a maximum dosage! The long-term upper intake level is 1.1mg. Note long-term.
It's not used all that much, because many patients have a bad reaction to it.
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A new approach to combatting iodine deficiency in developing countries: the controlled release of iodine in water by a silicone elastomer.
A Fisch, E Pichard, T Prazuck, R Sebbag, G Torres, G Gernez, M Gentilini
Am J Public Health. 1993 April; 83(4): 540–545. PMCID: PMC1694489 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1694489/
As long as the local shamans don't
I'm surprised that it was a surprise... (Score:4, Interesting)
'Cretinism' [wikipedia.org], the sufficiently-severe-to-be-clinically-obvious manifestation of iodine deficiency has been known for a considerable length of time, in places without sufficient soil iodine. I would imagine that smaller gains would only be a surprise if you thought that everybody not obviously diseased was fully healthy, rather than frequently mildly subnormal.
I use potassium salt you insensitive clod. (Score:2)
I use a potassium / sodium / iodine blend, like Morton Lite Salt, in everything I cook or bake, and one of those sea salt grinders at the table. This keeps everyone at the table happy, and heathly.
Hey, an iodized salt thread (Score:3)
Can anyone explain why my Morton's Popcorn Salt isn't iodized?
Re:Hey, an iodized salt thread (Score:5, Funny)
For movie watching a high IQ only gets in the way.
Increased IQ or protection of IQ? (Score:2)
Technically lack of iodine cause mental retardation, or a lowering of IQ, so using iodized salt in a population wouldn't actually increase IQ the IQ of the population, it would simply protect against the degredation caused by iodine insufficiency.
Interesting timing (Score:2)
I think it is interesting that the generation affected by the iodized salt brain boost would have just been coming of age when WW2 struck. The US would have entered the war with quite a few soldiers that would have been noticeably more intelligent than their fathers in WW1. I expect it must have helped given the increasing technical sophistication of warfare at the time. Smarter soldiers also tend to do better on the battlefield in general.
We put the iodine in (Score:2)
obviously (Score:2)
Re:derp.... (Score:5, Interesting)
But I um... thought... um.. it was good for.me to um..... have a what's the.word Jenny? A diet low is salt. I may not be smart, but I know what high blood pressure is...
Just a note that, according to my doctor, and many articles I've read, excessive salt in the diet is NOT a problem for many/most people, but only those sensitive to it. Good explanations can be found:
Re:derp.... (Score:5, Interesting)
excessive salt in the diet is NOT a problem for many/most people, but only those sensitive to it.
People with West African ancestory (as most African-Americans are) tend to be the most sensitive. East Asians tend to be the least sensitive. People of European descent tend to be in the middle. This correlates well with areas where salt was historically rare/common. In West Africa, salt was often brought in caravans across the Sahara, and was very expensive, and thus unavailable to common people. In China, for centuries, even peasants could afford to drench their food in salt-laden soy sauce.
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Most sensitive to what? A high fat, high calorie diet maybe. Salt, however, is NOT causative agent of heart disease. Your body naturally regulates sodium levels and readily excretes what it doesn't need. It's what we've been doing since our ancestors were swimming in the sea. The anti-salt movement is all about scaremongering and not about rational science.
Re:derp.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's also interesting that IQ scores tend to be spread that way as well.
IQ scores tend to be correlated with a history of urbanization and economic specialization. In a primitive society, innovation and original thinking are unlikely to lead to any benefit, and might lead to a disaster such as a crop failure or empty snares. But in an urbanized society with specialized jobs, successful ideas can be leveraged for disproportionate benefit. East Asia had large urban populations long before the West. In Europe, Jews were urbanized during the middle ages when almost everyone else was a rural serf. East Asians have average IQ scores about 5 points higher than Europeans, and Ashkenazi Jews are higher still.
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nazi Jews are higher still
They'd have to be higher than a kite to want to be nazis.
Sorry, I know I'm selectively editing and taking phrases out of context, but it really stood out.
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My cardiologist told me to add a little salt to my diet.
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My cardiologist told me to add a little salt to my diet.
But maybe he just wanted you to come in for checkups more often ;-)
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As I recall, there is a tribe in South America that gets practically all of their electrolytes through KCl, and they have something like zero incidence of heart disease.
Re:derp.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Cutting salt out of a diet that includes non-synthetic substances is probably impossible. If it lived on earth, it probably has salt in it.
Re:derp.... (Score:4, Informative)
Cutting salt out of a diet that includes non-synthetic substances is probably impossible. If it lived on earth, it probably has salt in it.
Salt is actually pretty important nutritionally and for osmoregulation [wikipedia.org]. Way too much/little is bad for you, but some salt is required. It's so important that part of our taste mechanism is dedicated to salt. Alton Brown summed it up nicely saying (okay, I'm paraphrasing) that while many things taste sweet (good eats), sour (bad eats) or bitter (poisonous eats), only one thing tastes salty - salt.
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only one thing tastes salty - salt.
There's more than one salt. NaCl just tastes the saltiest.
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Way too much/little is bad for you, but some salt is required.
OTOH, if you eat processed food you probably get sufficient without adding any.
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So Gen. Jack Ripper wasn't so crazy after all, huh?
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Yeah. Don't forget to stop vaccinating children also, while you are at that.
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... and using AC electricity (the radiation!!).
Actually, it'd be good if the chemtrail/fluoride/anti-vax people did stop using electricity. They'd be too busy doing their laundry to bother rational people.
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But with fluoride added to the water supply, we can reverse those gains..
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mercola/fluoride_b_2479833.html [huffingtonpost.com]
It all traces back to this guy: http://www.quackwatch.com/11Ind/yiamouyiannis.html [quackwatch.com]
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Don't forget the "salt will kill you" campaign. I remember that as far back as the 80s.
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http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/mercola.html [quackwatch.org]
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The standardized weighted mean difference in IQ score between exposed and reference populations was -0.45...
...The estimated decrease in average IQ associated with fluoride exposure based on our analysis may seem small and may be within the measurement error of IQ testing.
Your loss looks like it might be a rounding error.
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"The estimated decrease in average IQ associated with fluoride exposure based on our analysis may seem small and may be within the measurement error of IQ testing." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3491930/ [nih.gov]
Re:Gained I.Q. with Iodized salt - (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe not.
Does Fluoride Make Your Kids Dumb? [slate.com]
Dr. Mercola: Visionary or Quack? [chicagomag.com]
FDA Orders Dr. Joseph Mercola to Stop Illegal Claims [quackwatch.com]
Inspections, Compliance, Enforcement, and Criminal Investigations [fda.gov] - 2011
Inspections, Compliance, Enforcement, and Criminal Investigations [fda.gov] - 2006
Joe Mercola: 15 years of promoting quackery [scienceblogs.com]
The New PuritansWhen did liberals become so uptight? [newrepublic.com]
Are you kidding me? (Score:3)
Are you kidding me? That first letter is dealing with the toxicity of uranium hexafluoride, not fluoridated drinking water or salt!
The concern there is almost certainly due to industrial exposure of workers trying to purify uranium on the Manhattan Project.
I think that is as far as I need to look. You're following a quack, and in danger of becoming a crank. "Wakey Wakey"
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Yes, that would explain a lot of things. ;D
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-.45 is well within the margin of error for IQ testing. And really, any differences of IQ under 3% is not worth even considering. A person who cares can easily gain 10 IQ points just based upon environment alone.
What's more IQ itself is a narrow measure of aptitude primarily focused upon success rates at school. Even if the drop in IQ were more meaningful, it would still not necessarily mean that people were getting less intelligent, it could mean that their aptitudes were changing to focus on other things.
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Missed it. Of course I've been first and marked redundant before, so - meh.
Re:Good idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Great!
Any way we can distribute extra iodine to /. trolls and flamers?
As much as possible, please!
I'm wondering about the internet in general as a symptom of a larger problem. So these people got a little better at figuring out hos things tick or how to solve a puzzle. Know what they did with it? They tied themselves up in knots with conspiracy theories and bollox like that. Perhaps the answer is to cut out some of that Iodine.
There are days when I just don't want to see the crap that's going on on the interwebs.
Re:Good idea (Score:5, Informative)
They tied themselves up in knots with conspiracy theories and bollox like that. Perhaps the answer is to cut out some of that Iodine.
That's what the lizard men want you to think.
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'Informative'.
Right.
Maybe we should dispense a couple of iodine tablets with each set of mod points. Then, the mods will be smarter and protected against the effects of runaway nuclear reactors.
Bwahahaha! Moderators Rule the World!!!!!
(oops. Lithium deficiency again. This salt thing is really complicated.)
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Feed them crabby-patties, they're topped in iodine rich kelp.
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It's a representational government.
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Recall that DC voters re-elected Marion Barry.
DC voters don't like to get pushed around by the federal government, and they get pushed a lot. Marion Barry was a scoundrel, but he was sent to prison in what was a clear case of entrapment by federal agents. They were almost certainly targeting him because of his politics. How many other citizens have been handed free unsolicited cocaine by the US government? His reelection was just DC voters giving congress the finger.
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No, not really, most places don't. Even "sea salt" isn't from the sea in most cases. (They can call it sea salt based on theories that the mines were once, long ago, part of a sea.)
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Err... by your argument adding stupid members to a group or deleting smart ones would shift the IQ scale so that the 50th percentile (IQ=100) would move to a new, lower test score.
In any case, everyone understands what the summary actually means. Any given version of test is calibrated with a certain sample at a certain point in time. Over time, if the underlying population's score on the test changes, their IQ *score* as reported by tests calibrated by old sample populations changes as well.
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IQ tests are meaningless.
Baloney. IQ tests may not precisely measure "intelligence", but they are clearly measuring something. IQ scores are strongly correlated with economic success (higher salaries and lower unemployment), reduction in criminal behavior, and better health. Things that lead to higher IQ scores tend to raise these correlated factors as well, whether it is better nutrition, less lead exposure, or even coaching on the thinking skills required for the test (which seems to indicate that good "test taking skills" are
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They had no clue what was going on. They ate some salt, then figured it out.
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Not surprising, there's been quite a few studies done on kids born after WWII in east and west germany. The most telling was when soviets cut salt rations. Well for my own story, my mother was born in East Germany in '50, and has goiter, among a pile of other issues relating to iodine deficiency. This didn't happen to kids in the west side of Germany. She avoided the mental retardation due to Cretinism luckily(but ended up with the stunted growth), though many of her childhood friends didn't avoid any o
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.
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No
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Iodine in salt, like fluoride in water, is simply a convenient, low cost method of disposing of an industrial waste product! We are being deliberately poisoned!
Maybe you should try lithium in your food instead.