I don't know if iodine deficiency goiters have gone up... but people do still get goiters for other medical reasons.

Goiters from iodine deficiency were mainly a midwestern thing. People who lived where the soil contains iodine from at one time being washed by the ocean got enough iodine from what grew in the soil and eating fish from the ocean.
Midwesterners, however rarely ate ocean fish and ate vegetables grown locally. With the advent of distribution of vegetables from Florida and California and places like
Red Lobster and food such as McDonalds Filet-o-fish, and the adding of iodine to table salt, it's rarer and rarer to be deficient.

I do not eat enough salt to get my daily requirement of iodine, but I do eat a lot of seafood and kelp. I love kelp salad and buy dried kelp salad at a Japanese market. It is easy to rehydrate and make into a salad. I always put wakame in my Japanese soups as well.

Most of the salt that I used is not iodized, but the sea salt that I bought at Trader Joe's does have iodine added to it. However, I very seldom use this salt, as I prefer the other salts that I have. I use very little salt in my food anyway, except when I add soy sauce.

As Linda said, it was a midwestern thing. Years ago, when few things shipped refrigerated, people didn't get fresh fish in a lot of the midwest.

When people talk about iodized salt on the forum, they seem to think all basic salt in the stores is iodized. I wonder if that is true in the midwest. In the east the basic supermarket salt comes iodized and not iodized. I always get not-iodized salt.

I have a goiter but it's not from lack of iodine. I used iodized salt and sea salt.

Here, most of the basic table salt is iodized even though we're near the ocean. The salt that's sold for restaurant use is not. I didn't know you could get enough iodine from California vegetables. Cool.

Shellfish, shrimp, I believe contain the highest amount of iodine.

We have a friend who came here from the Middle East. She was only 22 but had a huge goiter. Doctor told her to eat Shrimp once a week. She had never eaten shrimp and refused. He told her to eat clams, oysters, etc. She refused to eat any of them as she was unfamiliar with shell fish.

Doctor told her to use iodized salt if she could not eat shellfish. She did and the goiter gradually went away. Took a few years.

Jane