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Comment by lostlogin | Hacker News Reader

The article mentions that blind taste testing couldn’t detect it at 10x the strength.

Surely people test before claiming such things?

“Unicef, concerned about the sensitivity of children to odd flavours, commissioned a study in which rice was prepared with salt iodised at ten times the maximum recommended concentration. In double-blind taste tests, the iodine was undetectable.”

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Iodized salt is almost always the industrially produced variety, pure NaCL and much more salty than the natural varieties - either sea or mountain salts that typically include other minerals and are milder in flavor.

We have iodised sea salt around here, and it’s not more nor less industrial than standard sea salt. It’s true that the flavour is different than hand-processed sea salt or fleur de sel because of those impurities (which include microplastics and other less-than-ideal compounds, though, even though I love and use mostly barely-processed sea salt), but it is neither more nor less salty.

That is more about crystal size and roughness than anything else. Some companies are working on nanoscale crystals of salt that allow you to use significantly less salt for the same saltiness profile based on these properties.

Cool! Where do I sign up for the salt innovation newsletter? I want to try this when it comes out.

Just run regular salt for a few seconds in a blender. I'm not joking, I prefer using powdered salt when seasoning sliced tomatoes and the like, and it does make a difference in perception vs. dose.

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