Iodine

I was recently honoured with a special baking request that led me to do a little research on Iodine and what it is and why we need it and where can we find it naturally. Back in the day (during The Great Depression) people were NOT getting enough iodine in their diets resulting in an epidemic of iodine deficiency. "So what?" you may be asking - Iodine deficiency is pretty serious my friends! A lack of iodine causes things like enlarged thyroid (goiter), hypothyroidism, and brain damage! It can also cause abnormalities in growth and development. (I am not making this up - LIVESTRONG has a great info page on this!!!)
In an attempt to stem this serious issue governments had the salt manufacturers add Iodine to their product and that is the reason we have iodized table salt today - even though we don't really need it anymore! We are pretty fortunate to have many foods available now that have naturally occurring iodine in them so we can meet our daily requirements (about 150 micrograms for the general adult population). These foods include:

Sea Salt
Stuff that comes from the sea (fish, seafood, sea veggies)
Dairy (all of it! I found this very interesting!)
Prepared meats (and some of the stuff that comes from the butcher case at grocery stores is 'seasoned' aka prepared - I was most disappointed to see that the PC Blue Label Skinless Boneless Chicken Breasts in my local shop have chicken and 'seasoning' even though they don't look seasoned and don't taste seasoned - all this means to me is they plopped some 'stuff' on my chicken that I don't want there - makes me sad but reminds me to READ LABELS ON EVERYTHING! Preferably before I buy it!)
Soy (which is in pretty much every processed thing on the planet)
Egg yolks
Frozen peas
Potatoes

This means that we no longer need iodized table salt - like not at all.
Again, you may be asking yourself "So what?" - well, lemme tell ya: too much of a good thing = a bad thing. When you over iodize yourself you can cause hypothyroidism (which ironically can be caused by iodine deficiency!) and autoimmune thyroiditis (I don't know what that is, but it doesn't sound fun!)

It's also important not to confuse 'salt' with 'iodine'. As you can see from the list above, something may have no sodium in it but still be rich in iodine.

Your choice is this: load up your system with iodine from natural sources, or load it up with iodine from processed food. My research found(and again, I am not a doctor, nutritionist, dietitian, or scientist)that if your food came from a FACTORY it had plenty of iodine - more than enough - if you generally eat foods from FARMS you should be getting just enough in your diet!

Another argument for FARMS not FACTORIES :)