So, I have a new fave YouTube food and cooking show that features a man named Adam Ragusea who is apparently a Big Deal on the internet. Not all of his videos are in the multiple-millions category, but quite a few of them are, and I’d say that his fame and fortune are richly deserved. I’m featuring his episode on iodine and the decline in use of iodized salt in this post, but let me say that I got acquainted with him via YouTube’s algorithm that has videos pop up on the sidebar according to what you’re watching at the time. I was researching bagel recipes, and he has one, so that one came up. In the course of that video he addressed an issue that bugs me every time I run into it: this idea that you’re supposed to measure your flour by the gram for yeasted-dough baking. That is such nonsense, and there he was, singing my exact same song about that ridiculous idea. But I’ll get to that in another post.
He has almost 250 videos, with a food-science episode on Mondays and a recipe-based one on Thursdays. I’m slowly working my way through the ones that interest me, and the one on iodine just came out. This was a subject I’d vaguely wondered about, for some reason, as I stopped buying iodized salt awhile back. And why did I do that? Because I bought into the idea that iodized salt tasted bitter, obeying the dictates of the people I admire in the food world but ignoring the great Harold McGee, a food scientist who has said, a number of times, that, while a trained taster might be able to detect the subtle differences in brands and types of salt, “it would take an unusually sensitive palate to be offended by the taste of ordinary salt, or to notice a difference in foods prepared with different salts.” Yes, a coarse type of salt, so-called “kosher” salt, is crunchy if it’s kept distinct on the top of something such as a pretzel. But once the salt dissolves, as it does for most of the cooking we do, any distinctiveness is pretty well lost.
Well, you might say, Americans eat a ton of processed food, in prepared items from the grocery store and in restaurants, and those items are notoriously high in salt. So we should all be okay, right? Wrong. According to a food scientist that Ragusea interviews in the video, food processors don’t use iodized salt. Plus, only about half the salt we now buy for home use is iodized–that pesky prejudice, once again. The food scientist is a little concerned: we’re seeing a small resurgence in iodine deficiency today.
It’s fair to say that I’m probably okay, as I eat a lot of eggs. One egg has about 24 micrograms of iodine, and the minimum daily requirement hovers around 150/day. I’d say I eat half a dozen eggs a week. Dairy products also have quite a bit of iodine, with whole milk (which I cook with), yogurt (which I eat fairly frequently) and cheese (which varies with the type and which I eat very frequently) providing quite a bit. And most types of meat have some. Fish has a ton. So does seaweed, but I can’t say that forms any part of my diet. Still, it won’t hurt to start buying iodized salt. I’m not going to overdose, as I’m not going to start taking any kind of supplement.
Oh, and as is probably clear from the above: unless a vegan eats a lot of seaweed and takes in lots of iodized salt, an iodine supplement is almost certainly needed.
So I’m almost to the bottom of my generic store-brand salt container. When I get a new box I’m going for the iodine.
Here’s the fascinating video:
And here’s a later video (just came out today as I’m writing this post) in which Ragusea explains why he prefers coarse salt (“kosher” salt) for seasoning items such a meat. I do have a container of that type on hand and it’s not iodized, but I’m not going to throw it out. I’ll just use it up and then take the advice in the video above to look for iodized coarse salt. As the Car Talk guys say, Kent Hoit.