I just looked it up and found out that Morton Kosher salt is not iodized, which is what I've been using for a few years now. A health issue has lead me to avoid processed foods and eating out. I wonder if I'm at risk of being deficient?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/21/well/eat/should-we-be-buy...
Similarly, people going for trendy sea salt are likely to be missing the recommended iodine.
User kosher salt.
Consider getting your vitamin D levels checked every once in awhile; that's the one you might be low on.
Iodine intake by Americans has dropped considerably over the past few decades. So much so that many pregnant women are borderline deficient or actually deficient. There have been several recent, high-quality studies in the U.S. and U.K. showing that pregnant women especially should be taking additional iodine supplements, and that supplementation beyond table salt could result in measurable increases in average IQ even in the U.S. and U.K.
When my wife was pregnant three years ago none of the nutritional supplements I examined (e.g. USP certified products like Nature Made) contained iodine. Partly because of the research and partly because she just doesn't like to cook with much salt, I searched high-and-low for a supplement. The research recommended 80-100 micrograms (mcg). The only supplement I found with such a small amount was a Whole Foods brand product, which I bought with some apprehension given the lack of certified quality control. Too much iodine can have similar deleterious effects as too little iodine, as it likewise screws with thyroid function.
When my wife was pregnant the second time around I bought another bottle of iodine supplements, as well as the exact same Nature Made prenatal vitamins. It wasn't until a few months later did I actually read the list of ingredients on the Nature Made bottle to discover that, sometime in the intervening two years, they began adding iodine! D'oh! So of course she stopped taking the separate iodine supplements.
Presuming the Whole Foods-brand pills were truly in the 100-microgram range, then all was good. The supposed safe upper limit of iodine intake (for pregnant and non-pregnant adults) as recommended by American doctors is actually far below the average intake for many Japanese populations, for whom no known bad effects are known. That said, most of the iodine supplements on the market I saw just had ridiculous and possibly dangerous amounts of iodine. It's a good development that Nature Made (and presumably other reputable prenatal supplements) have begun adding iodine.
For the record, my son turned out to be the smartest kid in the whole, wide world. ;)
Having a high-quality, upper middle-class diet isn't a simple answer. For example, cruciferous vegetables like broccoli inhibit the uptake and use dietary of iodine. Whatever the causes of the recent regression in wealthy societies, the fact of the matter is that the more modern studies 1) actually measured iodine levels, 2) measured outcomes, and 3) used large, randomized controlled studies. It's a good thing prenatal manufacturers are adding iodine, because even smart people (or perhaps _especially_ smart people) are stubborn and think they know better.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14140086 (my previous comment about this passenger)
I looked into the matter a little bit. The Thai king had instituted an iodized salt program. Public relations campaigns helped the Thai people appreciate all the different roles of iodine. Iodine is a good antiseptic (it shreds most single-celled organisms by combining with a protein that's not on the cell membranes of multi-celled organisms, iirc), but my friend's strategy to 'disinfect' her vegetables with slightly-salted water was probably an exercise in futility, even if her salt had iodine...
> I just looked it up and found out that Morton Kosher salt is not iodized, which is what I've been using for a few years now.
I remember some research that found Thai women of reproductive age had much better iodine levels if they ate seafood, than if they got their iodine from salt.
Additionally, foods that are grown near the ocean [2] have much better iodine levels than foods grown in regions where almost all the iodine has washed out of the soil (Michigan, etc). Ocean spray 'mists' iodine back onto the land, which increases the iodine content of the food grown thereon.
[2] http://iodinehistory.blogspot.com/2015/02/an-iodine-road-tri...
There's another interesting post on this blog about old fear-mongering about "too much iodine", because patient's thyroids weren't taking up the radioactive iodine that doctors were giving them for 'diagnostic' purposes: http://iodinehistory.blogspot.com/2015/02/i-was-right.html Too much iodine seems to suppresses the thyroid activity, so it is a concern. But this is mostly a problem for people who use supplements. I think one should consume 'enough' iodine to fully saturate their thyroid... A little more than it takes to prevent goitre [3] (when the thyroid swells to try to increase the amount of iodine it pulls out of the blood), but not too much...