[R.B.]

This is a very useful examination of the Iodine issue on the Western Price site which contains some material I had not seen before.

http://www.westonaprice.org/metaboli...-iodine-debate

I found the reference to historic intakes in the USA of iodine particularly interesting " Thirty years ago, when iodine consumption was twice as high as it is now (480 mcg per day) one in twenty women developed breast cancer. Thirty years ago, consumption of iodized salt was higher than it is today; in addition a form of iodine was used as a dough conditioner in making bread, and each slice of bread contained 0.14 mg of iodine. In 1980, bread makers started using bromide as a conditioner instead, which competes with iodine for absorption into the thyroid gland and other tissues in the body. Iodine was also more widely used in the dairy industry as a teat cleaner thirty years ago than it is now. According to this argument, 15 percent of the U.S. adult female population suffers from moderate to severe iodine deficiency.1"

I would be really interested to know if they saw higher levels of hyperthyroidism, which is one of the regularly advanced arguments against increasing the current intake recommendations.

I had not really taken on board that in some countries salt was fluoridated for example it appears both Germany and Switzerland inter alia fluoridate salt

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16156167
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16156165

Is intake in those that eat a lot of salt maybe sufficient to affect thyroid function - is this a potential issue; I have no idea but maybe worthy of consideration.

As referenced above iodine in salt will sublime so and it appears that the amounts of iodine in table salt may vary considerably; but I suspect fluoride levels would remain more stable, so users could end up with most of the fluoride but not much of the iodine - as ever just more unanswered questions . . .

As pointed out by Sally Fallon matters of health and nutrition are rarely straight forward.