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US Gained a Decade of Flynn-Effect IQ Points After Adding Iodine To Salt
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.'"
What is the Flynn Effect?
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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.
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.
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:
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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.
Maybe not.
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The New PuritansWhen did liberals become so uptight?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
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.
A lot of people in the US live in the so-called Goiter Belt, 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 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 to treat disease.
There's also disagreement 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).
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.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It's been offset by the introduction of fluoride in the water supply, which is simply Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and an international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids. Hence, Dancing with the Stars.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
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.
For movie watching a high IQ only gets in the way.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.