Comment by AStonesThrow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AStonesThrow | Hacker News Reader

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Table salt is refined after harvest, removing all other minerals and nutrients that aren't NaCl. And then those "waste products" are sold very lucratively to specialized supplement companies -- magnesium, selenium, calcium: you know, highly valued trace minerals.

Your table salt is a pure and translucent white because it's nutritionally worthless. You can season food, but you're not adding any micronutrients. And this is why low-sodium diets became very important: not because the salt itself was harmful, but because its essence has changed!

Salt's name will not inform you whether it's been refined. Sea salt, Himalayan salt, Kosher salt. The key is inspecting it for dark particles and natural impurities. Beware opaque boxes.

Unrefined salt may carry an FDA-mandated warning that claims it doesn't contain iodide, but welcome to Bizarro World, because they don't remove naturally-occurring iodide, but since it hasn't been added back in, they're obligated to deny it.

In most industrialised countries, table salt has iodine as an additive. I would not call that "nutritionally worthless".

I would consider it potentially harmful.

Ingesting iodine, much less deliberately fortifying salt for everyone to ingest, is the worst possible way to use it. Ingested iodine can lead to serious trouble, and does not produce the desired effect on the thyroid.

I ordered some potassium iodide from an organic supplement vendor. Indeed, the product directions said to take by mouth. I was directed in no uncertain terms to ignore that. I applied it transdermally.

Transdermal application has great advantage. You can't overdose. The skin will absorb a necessary amount, and no more. Wipe off the excess.

About 20 years ago, an inexperienced but eager PA started me on Levothyroxine for no good reason. It appears that no lasting damage was sustained by my thyroid.

Today, my TSH/T4/T3 levels are completely normal. I've been drug-free for over 12 months. Last week, my PCP agreed that there is no evidence of thyroid dysfunction.

Wouldn’t you have to consume extreme amounts of iodized salt for it to become an issue? At that point excess sodium would probably be causing significantly bigger problems..

Exactly, exactly, and that may indeed be the intent: make this heretofore innocuous and beneficial staple into something really undesirable, while you plead with us to moderate consumption. Then the "I-told-you-so's" come naturally!

Try consuming at least 50g of iodine free sodium per day and come back after a while, tell us how you’re feeling…

I'm curious about your statement that transdermal overdose is impossible. If I applied this to the entirety of my body simultaneously, how would my foot know to stop dragging in the potassium iodide after my neck got its fill?

Iodine deficiency leads to goiter in adults and cretinism (decreased height, lower IQ and in some cases mental retardation) in infants and small children.

Many places can get enough iodine through vegetables, but many places cannot. The small amount of added iodine in iodized table salts are typically not enough to cause any issues but are enough to backfill any nutritional deficiencies.

There's no value in demonizing something you don't understand. Let people eat their salts. There's no harm in unrefined salts, but normal table salts should likely be consumed occasionally by almost everyone.

Unrefined salt isn’t a good source of any of the minerals that it incidentally might have. Kinda sounds like you’re about to link us to a blog post about how it cures diseases (that also sells unrefined salt).

I am not, but consider that unrefined salt is less worse than the refined stuff, which as I pointed out, does nothing but season food.

You should also consider the inestimable value of salt to the ancient world, and perhaps not merely for its preservative uses. Perhaps salt today is uniformly worse than it was thousands of years ago, because all the really good deposits are tapped out?

Salt is one of the many things that is still trading on its "brand name" and reputation, yet it's been replaced by an impostor.

Table salt does more than season food. It can increase your blood pressure and CVD outcomes, especially in the doses you get from packaged foods and some cuisines. That's something to consider when most of us are dying of heart disease.

I don't buy the claim that unrefined salt is less worse than refined salt because we're talking about minute amounts of nutrients. You get the nutrients from the food you eat, not the salt you put on it. Do the math and show me otherwise.

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