Eating for Two: Iodized Salt
I thought I was past the part of my pregnancy where I worry about what to eat and onto the part where I worry about what we’re going to do with the kid when she’s out and about. But I just managed to find another source of concern, one I could have allayed easily enough at the beginning: most pregnant women should use iodized salt for cooking and seasoning, and I don’t.
The vast majority Americans are using iodized salt without even thinking about it. We began adding iodine to much of our salt in the 1920s, after the draft during World War I revealed the extent to which hypothyroidism, a result of iodine deficiency, plagued the population. Thanks to the fortified salt the problem all but disappeared, which was an especially happy occurrence for women of childbearing age: hypothyroidism can make it difficult for a woman to conceive, and if she does conceive her baby’s brain development will be more or less severely impaired by her condition.
I came across this fact for the first time last week, and a worried little light bulb went off in my head. I checked the pantry, and sure enough the kosher salt I use for cooking and the shmancy sea salt I use for seasoning are not iodized. I cook almost everything I eat myself, so I wasn’t getting iodized salt from processed food or restaurants. Had I significantly lowered our daughter’s IQ or done even worse with my salt snobbery?
I checked my vitamins. The prenatal multivitamin I take now contains the recommended daily dose of iodine, but the fancier prescription vitamin I took during the all-important first trimester contained no iodine at all. I’m glad I switched, with my doctor’s approval, when we discovered that my insurance did not cover the prescription vitamin. Since there’s still something I don’t quite trust about getting what I need from a pill, I set about reviewing my diet for other potential sources of iodine.
Turning to Dairy for Iodine
Happily, since I’ve been loading up on yogurt, cheese, and milk, it turns out that dairy products are a good source of iodine. Some dairymen feed cows iodine supplements to stave off infection, and udders are usually cleaned with iodine before milking. (What is good for those of us who aren’t getting iodine in our salt may plague others; some studies suggest that adolescent acne can be caused or exacerbated by high levels of iodine in dairy.) Although one study out of Denmark seems to indicate that organic milk contains less iodine than regular, organic dairy products should still contain some iodine, and I haven’t been able to find specific information about the iodine content of organic dairy products in the United States.
Other Sources of Iodine
According to the American Thyroid Association, other common sources of dietary iodine are bread, eggs, saltwater fish, seaweed, shellfish, soy milk, and soy sauce. (Although vegetables grown in the right kind of soil can also be rich in iodine, you will not be surprised to hear that many of the vegetables we eat are grown in overfarmed, mineral-deficient soil.) Since I’ve been eating these things now and then in addition to my daily vitamins and all the dairy I rely on, I’m not too worried about having gotten enough iodine for my baby’s development. Nevertheless, switching to iodized salt when I found out I was expecting would have been easy and reassuring, if I had known to do it.
So I went out and bought a canister of iodized salt. I don’t quite know how to use it yet—the grains are so small and fluid that pinching fingers feel clumsy, I don’t own a salt shaker, and of course the degree of saltiness is different. But I'll get the hang of it soon enough.
About the author: Robin Bellinger recently escaped a career in book publishing, which was cutting into her cooking time. Now she's a freelance editor and can bake bread on Tuesday afternoon if she feels like it. She lives in Midtown Manhattan with her husband and blogs about cooking and crafting at home*economics.
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14 Comments:
what vitamin do you take? care to share?
lexschmidt at 4:18PM on 06/24/08
Hey Robin, maybe iodized table salt isn't necessary. Iodized table salt is a chemically altered food, while unrefined sea salt, like seaweed, contains trace minerals (including iodine) from seawater; these minerals are lost during refining processes like washing and high-temperature kiln drying.
Getting your iodine from refined table salt that has had iodine chemically applied is no more natural or healthful than getting it from a vitamin pill - iodized salt is not a whole food.
On the other hand, your pregnancy and the correlating iodine requirements sound like a good reason to buy pricey, top-quality sea salt and grind it yourself. Malden and Celtic are two high-quality, unrefined brands that I've seen at Whole Foods.
producestories at 4:38PM on 06/24/08
Iodized salt is your easy, proven solution. Not something I'd waste too much energy on staying "natural" about.
PommeDG at 5:05PM on 06/24/08
RE: Hypothyroidism -- I'm not sure that it's "all but totally disappeared". Three of my family members have or had hypothyroidism, four if you include me. My mom cooked with iodized salt, but that's not why I have hypothyroidism. I have it because some people are just predisposed to it, and no amount of iodine will fix that.
Any woman who is having issues losing weight despite a good diet and exercise, or who is experiencing sluggishness or unusual hair growth or any other of a host of symptoms should be checked for it. The blood test is simple, and so is treatment, albeit lifelong -- I'm taking thyroid medication until my dying day.
Sorry, don't mean to be pedantic, but speaking as someone who lives with this somewhat invisible disease, I had to pipe up. :)
onalark at 6:38PM on 06/24/08
If you are eating fish you should be alright
smallblondemom at 8:08PM on 06/24/08
Thanks for the heads up on this. We use the kosher salt, too. I didn't know that so many of the foods that I enjoy were good sources of iodine. What a relief.
wookie at 8:47PM on 06/24/08
I had the same reaction, onalark! Hypothyroidism is actually pretty common, especially in women. Everybody should know the symptoms because they can be subtle: unexplained weight gain, depression, feeling cold, weakness or tiredness, constipation, dry skin, etc. When I got diagnosed, I had most of these symptoms, plus the beginning of a goiter (enlarged thyroid gland in the neck).
Okay, between the two of us, that's plenty of pedantry for one thread. ;)
Interesting post, Robin! I think most people have forgotten why salt is iodized.
stillSTH at 10:35PM on 06/24/08
@ PommeDG: I'm not sure that iodized salt is "proven." We're not sure what any of the side effects of the chemical process used to force iodine into refined salt might be, and what effect that has been having on our bodies over the past 100 or so years - and since unrefined sea salt already contains iodine and other trace minerals, I'm not sure there's an advantage to using the chemically-altered stuff in this situation, other than its lower price.
In countries where adequate nutrition is unavailable, iodized salt is an important resource. For someone like Robin, who clearly has many food and supplement options, iodized salt is of dubious value, especially as she's expressed her preference for sea salt.
But then again, if using iodized salt cuts down a little on the stress of prenatal nutrition, where there are so many anxiety-causing factors, it is certainly worth doing!
producestories at 10:53PM on 06/24/08
@lexschmidt, I take the Whole Foods brand prenatal multivitamin that only has to be taken once a day (I think there is also a version that you take three times a day). I also take a DHA supplement called Expecta which you can buy over the counter at CVS. The prescription vitamin was also a vitamin plus separate DHA supplement, but my doctor said Expecta was just as good. I still feel quite skeptical about vitamins in general. Would rather get everything from food but am pretty sure I'm not eating enough seafood to get all the good fish oil and iodine I need.
I have not yet encountered anything in my reading that suggests that unrefined sea salt supplies quantities of iodine similar to what is provided by iodized salt. But the web is wide, and as I've said, I'm no expert...so I will definitely look into it further. I would RATHER use sea salt, but for some reason iodized salt doesn't freak me out the way some fortified foods do. Even if I use the Michael Pollan test--would your grandmother have recognized this as food?--the answer is yes.
Thank you for your extremely civil comments about hypothyroidism! I do know that it still exists, of course, and should have said that systematically iodizing salt vastly reduced cases of iodine-deficiency-induced hypothyroidism, which was a widespread problem in USA in the early years of the last century and still is a problem in some developing countries. As you said, iodine deficiency is not the only cause of hypothyroidism, and I'm sorry I wasn't more specific. I was (selfishly) focused on the fact that iodine deficiency can be a problem for pregnant women (or their fetuses) even if iodine deficiency/hypothyroidism has never troubled them before...having been surprised to stumble across this fact so late in my pregnancy.
Robin Bellinger at 11:29PM on 06/24/08
When I was pregnant I specifically threw OUT my iodized salt. Like you stated in your post, you can get your iodine from other sources.
justjenn at 12:45AM on 06/25/08
Ah, the fun of halogens and you. Let's see, pregnant, wanting to assure that I am getting enough iodine in my diet, and have to make the choice between consuming two servings of possibly mercury loaded seafood a week, or a pinch of iodized salt each day containing 200 mcg of iodine coming primarily from the addition of a tiny amount of potassium iodide? Hmmm...
PommeDG at 2:04PM on 06/25/08
i never have used iodized salt and i'm not going to start now that i'm pregnant. i feel like i get plenty of it from other sources...not "possibly mercury loaded seafood" either. i never even thought about it until you posted it! i'm taking nordic naturals DHA supplements, which i used before i was pregnant, as well. i plan on breastfeeding, and the formula companies (Enfamil's Expecta) can screw themselves if they think they're still going to get my money. besides, who knows where they get their fish oil from? is it even fish oil in their DHA supplements? because i've read studies that the plant-based ones aren't nearly as effective.
dmarina at 1:43AM on 06/26/08
Kelp powder is a natural way to get iodine and in fact is pretty much how fish get it. Powdered kelp can be bought in bulk in most health stores, co-ops and places like Whole Foods then added to foods such as stews or smoothies. It can also be bought as supplements to be taken as a capsule or tablet. I think that's a better and much more natural way to obtain iodine than have it supplemented to the sodium. Kelp also has a lot of other valuable minerals and vitamins.
Sea salt does have some natural iodine and a bunch of other nutrients that table salt doesn't have (or has stripped out in refining).
However, there is such a thing as too much iodine. But, a lot of the thyroid issues these days are environmental particularly perchlorate which is part of rocket fuel (and used as a fertilizer in Chili which is another reason to buy local) and has contaminated a lot of our drinking water and consequently getting into a lot of veggies working its way up the food chain even getting into cow's milk. PCBs are another tough one for thyroids (thank you Monsanto) and fish and shellfish contamination is really bad in that case.
Environmentalism isn't just for hippies anymore. :]
Sieseye at 6:41AM on 06/27/08
Dmarina, thank you for the information about Expecta. I did not realize it was made by a formula company! I knew there was something about it that did not seem quite right (not straightforward enough, if that makes any sense) but had not bothered to find an alternative, since this is what my doc recommended (I am bad about trusting authority figures w/o question). Now I plan to look for what you are taking.
Sieseye, thank you for all this information. I had read that seaweed was a good source of iodine, of course, but I had not heard of kelp powder, which sounds like a good solution. I have been interested in eating more seaweed for a few years but have never managed to rotate it into my regular cooking habits.
Robin Bellinger at 10:49AM on 06/30/08