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> In many places, like Japan, people get iodine from seafood, seaweed, vegetables grown in iodine-rich soil or animals that eat grass grown in that soil. But ev
by acdanger 9y ago
> In many places, like Japan, people get iodine from seafood, seaweed, vegetables grown in iodine-rich soil or animals that eat grass grown in that soil. But even wealthy nations, including the United States and in Europe, still need to supplement that by iodizing salt.
Where did Western people get iodine before it was necessary to add it to salt? Has our soil been so depleted that iodine is no longer present in the vegetables grown in it?
- Iv 9y agoWestern population used to suffer from iodine deficiency: retardation, fetus malformations, dysfunctional thyroid. This is one of the many little invisible progresses that has steadily made our life expectancy increase all over the 20th century.
- swimfar 9y agoI know the question was specifically about Western countries, but this comment (unintentionally) makes it sound like it's only been a western problem. This was a big problem in China and is still an issue today [1] (although the numbers in that article aren't really specific to China). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_deficiency_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_deficiency_in_China
- IanCal 9y agoYour question supposes that most places had optimal iodine to begin with, but I don't know if that's true.
- maxxxxx 9y agoIt used to be pretty common for people to develop a goiter. As far as I know this is a sign of lack of iodine. So I guess most people simply didn't get enough before it got added.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- hycaria 9y agoIIRC, the deficiency was mostly prevalent in the Alps, where the distance from sea and avaibility of iodine rich foods was the most unfavorable.
- valesco 9y agoHence the French expression "crétin des Alpes" to designate an idiot.
- nik61 9y agoI remember reading that, even in the English countryside in the past, goitre was frequent among those who 'drank pond water' and thus missed out on any soluble naturally-occurring additives. And the cause was a mystery to everyone, of course.
- ginko 9y agoThere's even a piece of the traditional regional dress called a "goiter band" in Bavaria and Austria. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kropfband https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kropfband
- Turing_Machine 9y ago> Where did Western people get iodine before it was necessary to add it to salt? Iodine is so soluble that it's quite scarce other than in the ocean. And yep, people who lived inland (and thus didn't eat seafood) in premodern times were often iodine deficient.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Where did Western people get iodine before it was necessary to add it to salt? Some lived near the sea and had high seafood diets, but most were just iodine deficient, which doesn't stop a population from surviving, though it leads to suboptimal outcomes in a number of dimensions. There is this wierd pervasive mythology that before modern times people lived in an ideal state (at least in terms of nutrition), so any present deficiency from the ideal must reflect a difference between modern and premodern society. Past conditions were at least minimally adequate for survival and reproduction, or we wouldn't be here, but there's no real basis for assuming that they were in any way ideal.
- jdtang13 9y agoCursory Google search seems to indicate that some fruits, as well as potatoes (!), dairy products, fish, and eggs contain iodine. Even if you were a very poor European peasant in the middle ages, you would still get to eat potatoes, milk, and smelly not-fresh fish, so the iodine problem probably would be bad but not terrible. If you were a rich person or someone who lived on the coast, I would speculate that you'd be pretty much fine.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Even if you were a very poor European peasant in the middle ages, you would still get to eat potatoes No, you wouldn't, as a European of any social class, except maybe in the very late middle ages at the boundary of the Renaissance; potatoes were a New World import in the 16th century, which might just still be considered the Middle Ages in some parts of Europe.
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago> Even if you were a very poor European peasant in the middle ages, you would still get to eat potatoes Potatoes are a New World crop. Medieval European peasants didn't have them.
- ramparrt 9y agoAs I understand it, the iodine in dairy typically comes from the products used to clean and sanitise the milking and storage equipment (iodophor). It's not inherent in the dairy itself, otherwise we could just eat the cow's grass to obtain iodine