If you live in an iodine deficient area you need iodine or it can lead to thyroid disease.

We found an iodized sea salt at Costco. We don't eat much seafood/weed or processed foods which are highly salted so I do make sure to buy iodized. LOL, fun fact - did you know that table salt has sugar added to it? I only found this out last year and had been using it most my life. I also take iodine drops every day (well, try to) and give them to my kids every so often.

I believe in Ontario, Canada it is mandated that table salt has to have iodine added. They do not add sugar to the table salt here though. There is often calcium silicate added in some brands though, which keeps the salt from caking. Here you can still buy non-iodized in the form of Kosher, course pickling salt or some sea salts. You have to read the label because not all the sea salts are the same. I've have dealt with a lot of thyroid issues. I've been hyperthyroid, hypothyroid and I have a multi-nodular goiter. Growing up, I NEVER put salt on anything and it was always at the table to add to food afterwards. I do believe that growing up in an area where the land is naturally deficient in iodine, coupled with a familial predisposition lead to my thyroid issues.

Do note though that Iodine overload can also cause thyroid issues and goiter as well. It's common in places like Japan. I'd suggest checking out where you live and seeing how much it naturally occurs where you live. There's something called the Goiter Belt and it's near the Great Lakes area. IMO if you live there you should be way more aware of the iodine you need to take in.

I wrote the date on a 26 oz. package of Morton Iodized Sea Salt when I opened it in April 2013. It's still quite full. At this rate, I'll need more by 2020. The package lists FDA daily consumption at 1/4 teaspoon per day. I'm sure we get much more than that in prepared foods. I salt meat when I prepare it. We use salt at table on vegetables and eggs. (I don't bake.)

I always buy iodized salt. I remember a lady in our church when I was a kid who had a huge goiter, and it certainly scared me into using iodized.

I buy both kinds of sea salt, and also take kelp occasionally.

After reading Cookie's post about sugar in salt, I looked at the labels of my five kinds of salt. Only one--Hain's Iodized Sea Salt--listed dextrose. Hain's plain sea salt does not have dextrose or any other form of sugar, nor do the other three brands. Perhaps it has something to do with the added iodine.

I see my Morton's has dextrose--I wonder why?

I use Himalayan pink salt that I grind if I want to salt my food, I have iodized table salt for use in baking and I eat a bag of dulse weekly for the iodine.

As with most essential nutrients, the best approach to insure sufficient intake is to eat a varied and balanced diet.

Personally cookie, I wouldn't take supplemental iodine or anything else except as specifically ordered by a physician. A better approach would be to be sure your family members eat seafood a couple times a week. The benefits of doing so extend well beyond the iodine content.

Another option for those that don't like seafood or can't afford to eat it frequent or are worried about the mercury in it, is to eat plain yogurt. You can add your own fruit and if you want sweeten it. A normal serving has somewhere around 2/3 of what an adult needs per day and it's loaded with other important mineral and healthy bacteria. Of course that depends on where you live though and what the animal is being fed. Around here it is very common for our livestock minerals to have added iodine.

Baked potatoes also have a lot of iodine (can't remember how much) and cranberries are really high in it. Meat and eggs have some iodine as well, but of course it again depends on what the animals are fed. Seaweed and dulse are very, very high in iodine and can cause goiters as well.

I would also like to add a little clarity to my post above, that I didn't not develop thyroid issues until I was in my 20's. I also was a very poor eater as a child, detested milk and most meat and didn't have a big appetite. Just want to clarify that I don't think it's was specifically due to not eating salt, just due to not getting enough iodine. My thyroid problems started late in my first pregnancy after having severe nausea for 7 months (your iodine requirement increase in pregnancy) so I had many underlying issues that lead to my health problems.

I too would caution against taking supplemented iodine without speaking to your doctor as you can destroy your thyroid that way. Surprise, surprise Snidely and I actually agree on something. ;)

Give it a try, you might find more things we can agree on.

Wild salmon is very good for you, has no mercury, and can be eaten in a number of ways. Costco has a frozen wild "salmon burger" product that is very tasty, inexpensive, and has appeal to even non-fish eaters. Same is true of canned salmon- fried salmon patties made with egg, onion and breadcrumbs (or panko) taste like delicious crab cakes (and can be made using such seasoning if desired) at a fraction of the cost

Other Arctic fish, like haddock, pollock, cod, and others, are similarly inexpensive and uncontaminated. The key to enjoying fish is that it needs to be really fresh.

Oftentimes someone who says they don't like a particular kind of food, like seafood but true for any other, was raised in household where the adults didn't care for that kind of food and so it wasn't served. Or, in a household where picky eaters were catered to.

And sometimes a dislike of a particular food is due to an underlying allergy and is the body's way of telling you not to eat something that will make you sick. For me, there's a different kind of don't like for foods I'm majorly allergic to than to foods I just dislike, but it took a long time to figure that out.

I don't use a lot of salt. There's plenty enough salt in the foods I eat to have enough sodium. The more used to highly salted foods you are, the more salt you want. I use iodized for the salt I cook with. Infrequently, we use salt at the table. Shakers have iodized, but there's also a grinder with sea salt. I use the sea salt on lamb chops. :)

I don't use 'table' salt in anything. Kosher salt is the only thing I have in the house. Table salt is far too salty (yet I love potato chips)

I always buy iodized salt. I use the salt in cooking and don't even put it on the table as a rule.

I've read that overuse of salt in processed foods does nothing to contribute to adequate iodine intake, as most of it isn't iodized. Besides, eating more salt is not a thoughtful way to address a nutrient deficient diet.

Pilog, I'm glad you've been able to identify foods that you personally need to avoid. In talking about it, though, I wouldn't grant a blanket amnesty to those who are picky eaters or who follow unhealthy and unbalanced diet practices. Most of them do so as a bad and unfortunate habit, not out of some innate sensation that communicates food they personally need to avoid.

Before iodized salt, goiter cases could be found in Southern Illinois. For some reason in my home population, goiter affected more women than men. I travel to that region a couple times a year and for the past 30 years, I have not heard of anyone suffering with goiter, thanks to iodine addition.

Several brands of multivitamin tablets contain iodine.

I grew up in the 90's with a lot of processed food. I though I hated spinach and fettucini Alfredo for a very long time but finally figured out it was canned spinach and gloppy boxed pasta-roni that I didn't like, lol. The real versions are some of my favorites now.

I also didn't like pesto and guacamole but I grew out of that in adulthood after trying good versions. Now I love them.

But some things aren't just pickiness or bad exposure. I can't eat a raw tomato. I find the taste and texture revolting. I can do cooked tomatoes if puréed. No bell peppers in any form - to my taste buds they are foul and contaminate an entire dish so I can't pick them out. Those are the only things I will not eat (other than meat but that's an entirely different issue) under any circumstances except starvation!

I have Thyroid problems, was told to always buy Iodized salt. But I do use kosher salt for baking.

I never used to add salt when cooking, but for the last few years I have and what a difference in the flavor of food. I don't go overboard with it. I almost never add salt to a dish after it's done. I never swell with the foods we cook from real ingredients. If we get take out I always swell.... painful swelling too.

Just 1/6 th of a tsp of iodized salt meets close to half your daily requirement.

WIth this discussion I looked up some of the foods we eat regularly and their iodine content. We've been on a custard kick because we have loads of eggs again and don't want to eat eggs for breakfast every day. 1 serving has approx 24 mcg of iodine. Of course I do think it's somewhere around 14 g of sugar per serving but we don't normally eat any processed foods so I'm not worried about the sugar. The fish had a wide range of levels of iodine. Cod actually has over 2x recommended intake for a single serving. Other's were as low as a chicken egg so you'd have to compare the fish to get an accurate reading of how much you are taking in.

I love fish but I disagree about it being inexpensive. The prepackage fish I am not a fan of. Many times that is pumped with water before being frozen. I like to buy fresh fish when it goes on sale, but even sale price I am paying $5.99/lb. When I can grow our own meat for between $1.50/ lb and $3/lb, fish just rarely ends up on the menu here. When a nice T-bone steak costs me $4.50 less per pound than a piece of fish on SALE the beef is going to win when you're feeding 5 people. We do live very close to a major tributary that has Chinook Salmon, Rainbow and Steelhead trout so sometimes we are lucky enough to get some that way, but fish isn't a weekly thing for us it's just not cheap enough for a our family with our budget.

There's "sugars" of various types (glucose, dextrose, etc) in iodized salts. It's added in very tiny amounts to prevent the potassium iodide from breaking down into iodine, which evaporates. Obviously it's not needed in a non-iodized product.

There's no correct answer for which is better for you, that will vary from person to person. Too much (of most anything) is generally acknowledged as bad. I use mostly Kosher and sea salt these days. I've started bringing my own container of mixed seasoning to restaurants too for the places that only have table salt and box pepper.

The amount of sugar in the salt would be highly insignificant to diet. "

Glucose (dextrose)

Glucose is a sugar (the main sugar in corn syrup), and is added in small amounts (0.04%) to salt to prevent the potassium iodide from breaking down into iodine, which evaporates away (sublimes). Other potassium iodide stabilizers include sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), sodium carbonate , and sodium thiosulfate . "

That's 0.04% of the entire product. I'm not sure if only certain companies add it or if there are different regulations in US and Canada but none of my salt and I have two brands that are actually iodized have any form of sugar listed in the ingredients.

The fish is cheap notion comes from the fact that more than half of the population of the U.S. lives within 50 miles of a coast. A similar proportion of Canadians live near the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence, but, as far as I can figure out, there aren't commercial fisheries, or not large ones. That leaves line caught, farmed and imported for most Canadians, I'm guessing.

The tiny amount of dextrose in the small amount of salt I use in cooking doesn't bother me. I have some thyroid issues and this small amount of iodized salt seems to be adequate. I don't salt slabs of meat before cooking (as opposed to stews, etc., though in those I usually rely on the celery and onions for salt). That's when we use table salt. I don't puff up from my cooking either. The painful swelling is most often from fine dining restaurants where they seem to think the saltier the better is their reason for being. If I have some food made by others every week, I don't puff up too badly at other places, but LM3, I hear you!

BTW, they sell boxes of Morton's salt that look very much like the regular ones, but are labelled for food service and don't have iodine. As far as I can tell, restaurants "layer" the salt but don't use iodized.

On the dextrose front you would have to consume 2.5Kg of salt just to get 1 gram of sugar. So even if there is dextrose, unless you have an allergy or something, I wouldn't be worried about the sugar content.

LM3, you might be interested in this report about Canadian vs. U.S. salt usage. As far as I know, iodine is still required for all Canadian table salt, though non-iodized specialty salts are also sold.
http://www.farmfoundation.org/projects/documents/Goddardpresentation.pdf

Canadian labelling law is very specific about Salt:

Salt

All ingredients, including iodide, and their components must appear in the list of ingredients of table salt.
When used as an ingredient in the manufacture of a food product, the
components of salt are not required to appear in the list of ingredients

.http://inspection.gc.ca/food/labelling/food-labelling-for-industry/salt/eng/1391790253201/1391795959629

I'm surprised that your iodized salt doesn't list a sugar. I wonder what they use for a stabilizer.

I love salt. I would be sad if I had to restrict it. I track what I eat though and I'm not going over the recommended daily amount.

I'm currently on a prepared food meal plan. I'm eating 3 of the Amy's meals a day and supplementing with fresh produce, limited dairy and some nuts and seeds. Some of the products are fairly high sodium but they do have some lower sodium versions that I choose when I have the option. I assumed there would be plenty of iodine in their salt but I'll have to research that. I generally use sea salt in my kitchen but they have iodized versions of that now too.

I looked today in the one grocery store for iodized sea salt and could not find any. Will look other places though. I use a little sea salt when cooking, esp. On beef and vegetables but mine is not iodized. I have thyroid nodules so after reading this thread I thought I had better try and find some. I never put salt on my food in a restaurants....it would have to be quite bad!! :-)

I was at the Grocery store and they only had two brands: Windsor and Fino, both had sugar listed. No Sifto (which is a major Canadian brand) to compare so not sure if it's just mine is so old or Sifto doesn't have it. Not that I think the amount of sugar is really anything, but just wanted to check since I was at the store anyway.

Date on my salt is 09/26/12.... perhaps that's why. LOL Would love to heard from others that have Sifto though and see if they now have sugar listed, just for curiosity sake.

Oh and just editing again to add.... see I told you I wasn't a big salt user. ;)

pillog, in conversations people share their experiences and views. What I've described are mine. My knowledge of the Canadian food industry is nil. I'm surprised to hear that quality fish doesn't make it to the inland population areas. Or, maybe you live in a rural area and have limited choices.

As with chi83's memories of processed food, boxed pasta and canned spinach (which sounds completely disgusting), the picky eaters I've known have come from families (and geographic areas) where the food traditions aren't, let's say, very interesting or diverse. I've known of nuclear families (friends and extended family relatives ) full of picky eaters. If the food eaten in the household isn't all that great and choices are narrow, and/or if picky habits are tolerated, that's the outcome.

But also as some mentioned, some grow out of limited food tastes as young adults when they have more exposure (and control) concerning what to eat.

It's no secret that the most healthful and economical means of eating is to buy and prepare ingredients, not to buy end products in any of various forms. Yet many who need to keep a watchful eye on food
spending tend to spend disproportionately on processed food and fast food, two of the worst nutrition and health alternatives.

PS - if a foul odor is what comes to mind when you think of brussels sprouts and other veggies, the problem is they may not be fresh AND sound like they've been overcooked.

LM3, the kosher salt I'm using now is Windsor. I also buy it in bulk and refill the box, no idea what brand that is. No sugar. Just some kind of soda as an anti-caking agent.

I bought a container of table salt for 50cents long ago, as I read that it's the best for baking as it dissolves quickly for baking. No sugar there either. "Pride of the World" brand name.

Our huge salt plant is Sifto yet I don't have any sifto in the cupboard, LOL

Jasdip - I have the Kosher Windsor that we used for doing our bacon and I have PC sea salt which I know can come in Iodized as well, but this one isn't. Now every store I go into I'll be checking for Sifto. LOL This was No Frills so it could just be that they carry the FINO instead.

To Snidely's comment about cruciferous veggies and smell. There are actually genetic components. I think there is something like 25 different genes that play into tasting bitter and some people those bitter veggies are disgusting. Then there are people who have very refined smell, which also plays into how your foods taste.

I like roasted Brussels sprouts. No bad smell compared to boiling or steaming.

And yes, canned spinach is gross! Kinda slimy with bad flavor. All our vegetables came from a can when I was growing up. My mom was a single mom without much time or money so I can understand. When I have kids I will try to do a better exposure so hopefully they don't struggle with poor habits as an adult like I do.

We were a frozen veggie family growing up. I didn't realize that lima beans weren't dried out and desiccated until I cooked them myself as a grown up. I don't think I ever saw a mushroom that wasn't in a can and I didn't realize that meat could actually be moist rather than cooked until any potential pathogen was completely obliterated. I like almost everything food wise, but I can't stand raw mushrooms. I would eat them if I have to but, it would not be by choice. I only like them cooked. I also do not like eggplant as it tastes like pepper to me and I don't like pepper. So even people that are pretty open about what they eat and like a variety of different ethnic foods can also have foods that do not taste good to them.

My Sifto salt doesn't have any sugar in it. As I age I am starting to use more salt in cooking and in baking. I have never used it thinking and assuming that we got enough in the few packaged foods that I used but now that I buy sodium reduced or sodium free products I am concerned about the amount of sodium we are getting as to whether or not it's enough. I don't add much - just a couple of shakes of the salt shaker during the cooking process.

My MIL is a very unimaginative cook and believes in cooking everything to mush and beyond salt and pepper has never met a spice or herb. When I started cooking for my DH (he was 28) he thought that red peppers were spicy, didn't know what an avocado was, thought that pasta dishes were only found on restaurant menus, didn't realize that meat could be tender and that vegetables lose their nutritional value when boiled to mush. Her answer for an upset stomach or a digestion issue was Pepto-bismal or Immodium instead of more fibre or less or cutting out what was bothering you. My poor DH was on a vicious cycle of that.

I don't eat eggs, cooked mushrooms (mushroom sauce is ok, just not the mushrooms) or creme brulee - why? because they all have a slimy texture and I do not like slimy textures.

Blfenton, you'd feel the same as I do about okra too!

I try to buy low or no-sodium products, but they're not always available. I like canned tomatoes and not brand has low/no sodium. I hadn't thought of the iodine factor, but surely there's enough iodine in the canned products because of the salt. It doesn't take much iodione to have the recommended amount, I believe.

I don't salt anything at the table, and I never use the recommended amount in recipes (e.g. 1 tsp). And only kosher which is less salty tasting than table salt. It says on the box to use kosher the same measurement as table salt, except for 1/4 cup, then you add 1 tsp more kosher for each 1/4 cup of table salt.

Jasdip - Ya Okra is kinda like snot IMO. I do love the flavor though, excellent in soups. I'm pretty sure that the package foods with sodium don't use the iodized salt. I think only table salt is mandated to have iodine added. Also if you want iodine in salt but like Sea Salt, I know PC makes one that has added Iodine. Last time I bought sea salt, I remember noticing that when I read the labels (was looking for different flavored salts).

I have a container of sea salt that someone gave me. It's waaayyyyy to salty for us to use. I use it combined with baking soda to clean the sink!

I love the sea salt when I make things like bean salad or cucumber tomato salad. You're right though it is strong, but you don't need much. The tomato salad is my all time favorite salad: tomatoes, cucumber, garlic, onion, basil, olive oil and tad salt to taste. It's amazing with fresh picked tomatoes.

Chi83, I've looked at beautifully roasted, best crop brussels sprouts and thought they looked delicious, but could barely choke half of one down, and nearly brought it back up. I can deal with cauliflower and cabbage if they're raw or cooked right so they don't stink so bad. I have the same reaction to the sulphur in vitamin capsules. The best vitamins I ever had used to mask the smell of the sulphury B's with vanillin, but they wanted to be all natural so stopped that and didn't put in a different mask. Even after I aired out the smell and could swallow them, they came back up. I can eat all kinds of cheeses that stink worse! I just can't tolerate sulphur!

Yes, the Canadian law (which I looked up yesterday) mandates iodine for table salt. The salt in canned goods probably doesn't have it. There's such a thing as too much iodine, and the amount of it people got from canned goods would be too variable, I'd think. Every kind of salt crystal has a different finished (serving) shape and, I think, density. You can get grinders that reduce sea salt to the size of regular table salt, but they're generally expensive. Regular salt grinders tend to make small flakes, which taste good, but are actually as big as several grains of regular table salt. That's probably why sea salt tastes saltier. The iodine in salt is bitter, however, and it could be that sensing the bitterness along with the saltiness lessens the perception of saltiness.

BTW, The Canadian Salt Company, according to Wikipedia, has been a division of Morton since the 1950's and is the maker of Windsor, Fino and Safe-T-Salt. By their own website, Compass Minerals, the makers of Sifto, are the largest salt producers in North America. It sounds like table salt is a very small part of what they produce. I also learned that the discovery of the original Sifto salt bed started a "salt rush". That sounded interesting, but a quick search on Amazon/Amazon.ca didn't turn up any books on the subject. I have a copy of Salt (the history of salt, not the spy novel) that my father passed along to me awhile back. I suppose I should read that...

So perhaps the fact that Morton is the parent company of Windsor and FIno, that is why there is sugar in that one. That is also very likely why the store I was at yesterday only carried the two brands and not the competition. I've noticed retailers do that often when a large corporations has several smaller companies. Yes to Sifto having table salt as just a small division. They are large producers for softener salt and road salt. I'm sure lots of other products too.

The sugar answer is:

"Hi Robin,

Thank you for contacting Morton Salt. Dextrose is added in very small amounts to stabilize the potassium iodide in Morton® Iodized Salt. The amount of dextrose in iodized salt is less than 0.04% For one cup (approximately 288 g) this calculates to less than 0.12 g per cup."

My danged curiosity! I finally found a second hand reference for the iodine stabilizer in Sifto salt: sodium thiosulphate. It comes from an article on a Canadian site, whose author claims to have gotten it in a document from Sifto. Sodium thiosulphate is used to reduce chlorination of water, and other kinds of bonding situations, as well in supercooling applications. It seems pretty harmless, but I don't know enough about chemistry to understand it properly.

I thought you were hypersensitive to sulfur, you smell it when it's a few blocks away? That's what the "sulphate" means

I didn't say I thought sulphur was harmful--just that I can't choke down the smell without becoming nauseous. I doubt there's enough in the salt to smell (if it even does smell in that form), but even so, I don't live in Canada--haven't even visited there for decades--and I use Morton's which has the dextrose. :)

If you have hypothyroidism or a healthy thyroid then it is a good idea to use iodized salt. However if you have hyperthyroidism too much iodine in the diet can cause problems so plain salt would be better. I'm hypo so I used iodized. I don't worry about such things as minute amounts of dextrose in my food.

My surprise for the day.

Yeah - I know that they've been putting sugar into almost everything ...

... but I'd have said, "Surely ... not including salt!"

I've been wrong - (sometimes).

ole joyful

I have iodized sea salt and Himalayan Pink salt...

I saw 'restaurant quality' Morton's salt today in a store and it said right on it that it has no iodine in it which is a necessary component of health.