Raise IQs with a Dash of Salt

It's often the simple things that can make a huge difference.

In this case, it's iodized salt.

From Nicholas Kristof's column today in the NYT...

Almost one-third of the world’s people don’t get enough iodine from food and water.

When a pregnant woman doesn’t have enough iodine in her body, her child may suffer irreversible brain damage and could have an I.Q. that is 10 to 15 points lower than it would otherwise be. An educated guess is that iodine deficiency results in a needless loss of more than 1 billion I.Q. points around the world.

The Lancet, the British medical journal, reported last month that “Iodine deficiency is the most common cause of preventable mental impairment worldwide.”

Occasionally in my travels I’ve been unnerved by coming across entire villages, in western China and elsewhere, eerily full of people with mental and physical handicaps, staggering about, unable to speak coherently. I now realize that the cause in some cases was probably iodine deficiency.

“Probably no other technology,” the World Bank said of micronutrients, “offers as large an opportunity to improve lives ... at such low cost and in such a short time.”Yet the strategy hasn’t been fully put in place, partly because micronutrients have zero glamour. There are no starlets embracing iodine.

Fortunately, it looks like Canada may be coming to the rescue as it has recently taken the lead by sponsoring the Micronutrient Initiative. I hope so.