Adding iodine to salt played a role in cognitive improvements: research (2013)

Then you might enjoy "Star Maker" by Olaf Stapeldon. It is available on Amazon.

After studying atmospheric Chemistry I found it hard to not feel like our planet was alive in some sense of the word but "alive" has a very precise meaning and Earth doesn't fit the definition. Presumably because it doesn't reproduce

If "wrong" means "false", then nothing!

While the statement is not false, it has a kind of type error. Iodine is not in a category that can or cannot be synthesized in organisms (or any chemical reactions). We only talk about molecules in this category: e.g. Vitamin C can be synthesized in some organisms, but not others.

The following is also not a false statement: household waste isn't handled by the JVM garbage collector. However, at least we know it was written in jest. To nitpick that one would be to betray not getting the computer science dad joke.

At best, it doesn't say anything useful. You can say the same thing about carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, etc.

At worst, it implies that, like essential amino acids, it CAN be synthesized by some living organism.

When my wife's doctor recommended more iodine in her diet, I was surprised how hard it was to find iodized flaky salt. I only found one brand I could order, and it was extremely expensive and didn't have a great texture for cooking with. I keep iodized table salt around and sometimes use it for salting soup, stock, or pasta water, but 99% of the time I reach for plain old Morton kosher salt.

While I was growing up, my family put so much salt on everything, even before tasting it. About once a month during the summer months my folks would surprise us by picking up pizza (with 8 growing kids, it was a lot of pizza). The top would be flopped open on the boxes, and then mom would start shaking the salt, and shaking, and shaking, and wouldn't stop until you could see a layer. We were all so used it that non-salty pizza was drab, just as you state.

I finally kicked the habit when I went to college. There were no salt shakers out on the tables. After the first semester I went home and nearly choked on the level of salt on the food.

> In other words, homeostatic feedback causes salt consumption to stay about the same by increased consumption of salty-tasting processed food.

I'd imagine that McDonalds/Wendys/etc don't view that as a bad thing...

> why don't they make iodized flaky salt?

They'll figure out a way eventually, but it is definitely harder.

It is always easy to grow something uniform as a pure crystal, without fault lines on them causing crumbling.

As a kid who spent a lot of time with chemistry, it used to fascinate me that you can crystallize out a clean salt crystal out of a mix of potassium permanganate and salt, the salt grain will grow pretty much pure salt on it without a hint of purple (also burned my nose skin off collecting chlorine from the exercise, talk to your local chemistry teacher and find out why).

I never succeeded in making a colored salt transparent crystal.

I think it's a United States thing. There are other countries where all salt meant for human consumption must be iodized.

The issue with sodium intake is not the quantity but rather the osmolality.

https://peterattiamd.com/rickjohnson/

> Excess sodium intake is associated with cardiovascular disease and heart failure.

The evidence for this is poor, and there is some evidence to the contrary.[0] Right now it is difficult to assert that there's anything more than a correlation, possibly because many popular high salt food choices could be bad for reasons other than sodium (e.g. fast food staples). In recent decades, widespread success of anti-salt messaging means that lower salt intake is now highly correlated with eating a healthy diet.

There's no first-order harm in a low salt diet, but there may be some second-order concerns. For example, when food manufacturers are pushed to reduce salt, their arsenal for achieving hyperpalatability becomes narrowed to objectively worse things like sugar and refined seed oils.

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[0] "The field of heart failure has evolved [...] There is now substantial randomized trial data to indicate that dietary sodium restriction does not provide the reduction in clinical events with accepted heterogeneity in the clinical trial results." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38215917/ (2024)

Thank you. For the life of me I could not figure out why that is true.

I mean, it's possible that at some point evolution produced such nuclear reactored individual, but who got "naturally selected" rather quickly for obvious reasons

The kidneys? A pair of calutrons.

smiles in katalepsis

Our bodies can synthesize several inorganic compounds, and other organisms can synthesize even more. There are biological sources of $H_{2}O$, $NH_{4}^{+}$, $NO$, $HCO_{3}^{−}$, $HPO_{4}^{2−}$, and (traditionally considered inorganic despite having carbon) $CO_{2}$. Iodine is an element, not a compound, and can only be synthesized through nuclear processes, not chemical ones.

Minerals (as the term is used in nutrition, not in mining) are chemical elements, not "compounds". They are part of the constituents that can be synthesised into compounds. Usually our bodies obtain them in some form of organic or inorganic salts, which are compounds, so we obtain them as parts of compounds. To synthesise compounds that contain iodine, you need iodine in some form. As we are not talking about nuclear reactions through which elements are synthesised through other elements, there is no way humans, animals or plants synthesise any minerals like iodine, we all obtain them from some source. The original sentence is weird, because it talks as if iodine can be synthesised somehow chemically but just our bodies are unable to.

Does respiration count as synthesis?

Too much iodine can lead to thyroid problems, and this has been a problem in some subgroups in Japan: https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/107/6/e2634/6516999

Even without iodized salt, Japan is one of the highest consumers of iodine worldwide. [1]

But I agree. Even though iodized salt is pointless in Japan, so is the law banning it (assuming OP is correct, and it is in fact banned).

[1]: https://anaturalhealingcenter.com/documents/Thorne/articles/...

Oh, I should have been clear there, I don't do kosher because it is "kosher." I just like the larger flakes and it is easier to cook with from familiarity. I'm assuming with time I could get used to iodized again, but not at all clear if I need to.

And we have actually been doing quite well with not eating out too often. Literally less than 5 times all month. Such that I am not at all worried that we are getting too much salt.

Though, that starts getting at the general question. How often should I get blood work for nutritional analysis? Because.... I don't know that I've ever done that.