The World Health Assembly in Geneva has just approved -- unanimously -- a resolution offered by Peru that directs national health departments to report the status of their efforts to promote universal salt iodization (USI) every three years, reports the International Council for the Control of Iodine Deficiency Disorders (ICCIDD).

ICCIDD, with the active support of the Salt Institute, lobbied the issue in Geneva, contacting 17 country delegations and speaking on the floor of the Assembly. The action was also endorsed by The Network for the Sustained Elimination of Iodine Deficiency.

The new May/June issue of Foreign Policy magazine includes a compendium of the answers of 21 of the world's "leading thinkers" in response to the question: "What is one solution that would make the world a better place?"

Among the 21 intellectuals is Denmark's Bjørn Lomborg , author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and the tell-truth-to-power advocate that Al Gore refused to debate about "inconvenient truths" on the environment.

Lomborg argued that the most important problem for mankind is overcoming iodine deficiency. He explained: "Children lacking iodine do not develop properly, either physically or intellectually. All they need is salt fortified with iodine." Lomborg, a professor at the Copenhagen Business School notes that 3 million people die a year from malnutrition - and hundreds of millions of children suffer reduced mental and physical abilities because of "unsexy-sounding 'micronutrient deficiency' - a lack of iodine, vitamin A and iron.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has released The State of the World's Children 2007 with statistics from nearly 200 countries around the world on the percentage of households with access to iodized salt. While progress over the past 15 years has been dramatic, its pace has slowed. A decade ago, only 54% of the world's households had access to iodized salt; today it stands at 70%. But it has increased from 66% in 2000 and only from 68% from 2006 to 2007. Country tables are included .

Salt figures prominently in two of the 15 medical greatest medical advances since 1840, according to the latest British Medical Journal , including the one judged most important: public sanitation . Chllorination is an important element in ensuring public sanitation. The other is oral rehydration therapy -- the administration of a solution of salt, sugar and water to combat diaherria.

A third salt-related development was highlighted as one of the major health advances -- the development of systematic rules for applying science known as "evidence-based medicine ." As BMJ points out: how can it be that clinicians give only lip service to basing treatment deciisons on hard science and why have they had such a hard time setting aside their informed professional opinions in favor of reliance on scientific evidence? That's the question we've been raising for the past decade with regard to the mounting scientific evidence that there is no health benefit for reducing dietary salt .

Finally, an omission, we believe, from an otherwise-excellent compilation: the fortification of dietary salt with potassium iodide or potassium iodate. Iodizing salt to combat Iodine Deficiency Disorders and the mentail impairment they impose on children born of iodine-deficient mothers and developing children receiving insufficient amounts of the vital trace mineral iodine was worthy of inclusion. That said, we''re not sure which of the 15 should have been jettisoned to make room.

Salt tastings are all the rage, salt samplers are among the choicest holiday gifts, and chefs tell us each salt has a different flavor and has to be used to its best advantage in cooking. Sea salt tastes a lot better than mined salt, Rocco DeSpirito told the New York Times. "It's got a real saline, ocean character that comes across in the food."

Thanks to celebrity chefs, popular cookbook authors and gourmet catalogs, entire mythologies have developed about salts and their healthful virtues. Culinary gurus talk passionately of various salts and continually try to outdo each other for the most alluring, exotic and lavish offerings. And salt fads are born. Gourmet salts can now sell for more than 100 times the price of plain table salt. For most of us, following these food fads seem harmless fun. It never occurs to us it might not be.

Often taken as gospel are claims that sea salt is unrefined, more natural and more healthful than ordinary table salt because it comes from the sea and is high in minerals. Sea salt has been praised for tasting pure, fresh, bright, delicate, sweet, sharp, refined, balanced and well-rounded. Everyday table salt is condemned as tasting bitter, tinny, metallic, acrid, characterless, and chemical-like, because it's said to be cheap and highly refined.

In actuality, all edible salt sold is about 99% pure sodium chloride. The remaining 1% - negligible traces in a dish - are far too minute to make a difference nutritionally.

These observations at year-end on Junkfoodscience are by way of introduction to some further thoughts on the importance of iodine nutrition in the U.S. Pointing to the "astounding changes" identified in Food Technology magazine last month (the article was by Salt Institute technical director Morton Satin, although not identified in this article), the author continues:

While iodine levels are not yet low enough to declare a public health emergency (remember, RDAs are not minimum requirements and are set higher than most people need to prevent deficiencies to allow for a safety margin), they indicate a trend of serious concern to health professionals.

This summer, researchers at the Conway Institute of Biomolecular & Biomedical Research at the University College Dublin reported that the iodine intakes among Irish women of childbearing age were significantly below World Health Organization recommendations. They reported that a mere 3.3% of all salt sold in Ireland and UK was iodized. This past spring researchers reported in the Medical Journal of Australia that iodine deficiencies were re-emerging in Australia.

A week ago, the New York Times reported that about one-third of the world's population eating only locally produced foods is short on iodine, contributing to stunted growth among the children and "even a moderate deficiency lowers intelligence by 10 to 15 IQ points, shaving incalculable potential off a nation's development." Multiple international iodizing efforts are underway, just as the United States did in the 1920s. Meanwhile, we might be poised to having to relearn our own history lessons.

For articles like this, Junkfoodscience has been nominated for recognition as the Best New Medical Blog . If you agree, you might want to add your vote to recognize salt-sensitive medical reporting. We vote aye!

The New York Times' headline writer has done humanity a great service. Since the mid-1920s when American and Swiss saltmakers began iodizing salt -- and ending the scourge of Iodine Deficiency Disorders (IDD) -- public health authorities have been in agreement that fortifying salt with iodide or iodate is the best means to overcome IDD. But terms like "hidden hunger" and "micronutrient malnutrition" don't capture mindspace. With the visible manifestation of the enlarged neck, a swollen thyroid gland, goiter, now rare in many societies, there has been no good way to convey that IDD is not an aethetic problem as much as the cause of irreversible mental impairment. If an expectant mother doesn't get enough dietary iodine, her child can be penalized 10-15 I.Q. points because the brain doesn't fully develop. Iodized salt solves this deficiency problem for pennies a year.

"Raising I.Q." connects with people.

Iodizing salt stands along with basic sanitation and clean public drinking water as the greatest triumph of 20th century public health.

And iodized salt was the world's first "functional food," a topic much in the news today as food manufactures vie to engineer healthier foods.

With that for context, read the story in today's New York Times: "In Raising the World's I.Q., the Secret's in the Salt. " (free registration required) I especially liked the lede where one Khazah boy calling another stupid was quoted saying:

"What are you," he sneered, "iodine-deficient or something?"

Over the past 15 years -- the period during which UNICEF identified salt iodization as the top global child health priority -- Kiwanis International has raised more than $75 million to combat IDD. Now the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has begun investing, too. Groups like the International Council for the Control of Iodine Deficiency Disorders (ICCIDD) have been at this since the 1980s and after a major worldwide conference of salt producers in 2000, the salt industry has been integrally involved. In the wake of Salt2000, salt producers joined with ICCIDD, Kiwanis International, UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a few others to form The Network for the Sustained Elimination of Iodine Deficiency . Read more on our website .

It's great to see publicity like this story. Had it appeared a decade earlier, it would have touched the hearts of Americans then as it does now and made Kiwanis International's fundraising task a great deal easier.

Congratulations to all!

The November issue of Food Technology is just out and the Op Ed Perspectives page is devoted to the important matter of the precipitous decline in the consumption of iodine in North America due to the increasing number of meals eaten away from home. The article reviews the history of salt iodization and its public health benefits. At the article's conclusion, I ask that the nation's burgeoning restaurant and food service industry to make a point of asking for and using iodized salt in their product formulations.

The American public is unaware that expectant mothers are ingesting only about three-fourths of a key nutrient required for proper fetal brain development according to an NIH-funded public opinion poll conducted by Opinion Research Corporationa and publicized by The Solae Company .

And after reading this news report, Americans still won't know the crucial importance of adequate iodine nutrition for pregnant women and infants since the article is about choline. NIH has done nothing to publicize the need for improved iodine nutrition, but its sister agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tracked a decline in the iodine status of the American diet including a fourfold increase in pregnant women consuming less than the World Health Organization's minimum acceptable levels of iodine.

A major source of dietary iodine, of course, is in iodized salt.

The Economist recently ran a story on "Diet and the unborn child" emphasizing the importance of omega-3 fatty acids in fetal development. Absolutely valid. Missing, however, was any mention of the importance of iodine in the diet of expectant mothers. If The Economist's story is correct that omega-3 can raise children's IQ by 3 points, that's great -- and about one fourth the estimated 13 IQ points that proper iodine nutrition confers. Eat that iodized salt. For more, see the Salt Institute webpage on Iodized Salt .

As one navigates cyberspace learning about salt, sometimes misunderstandings, through repetition, seem to endow erroneous claims with an unwarranted credibility. Take the case of iodine in sea salt.

One blog I recently visited pointed towards the Saltworks Inc. website reference guide to gourmet salt . Interesting site, but one error on the site -- typical of a number of other cyber-discussions -- needs to be flagged.

The site says "Natural sea salt is a healthy replacement for ordinary table salt." Nothing wrong with that. Sea salt, properly washed, is every bit as healthy as evaporated table salt.

The context, however, introduces a misunderstanding. Immediately before, the text discusses the importance of dietary iodine, noting that iodized salt is a valued delivery vehicle for iodine-deficient populations, but adding, correctly, that diets with sufficient seafood will get enough iodine.

It is in this context, then, that the text claims that sea salt is a safe alternative to vacuum pan evaporated salt. While "safe" and "healthy," sea salt is NOT a good source of dietary iodine. It would seem natural that it might be, since it comes from the sea, but, in fact, sea salt has only minute amounts of iodine and is NOT a safe alternative for those on iodine-deficient diets who are seeking to improve their health (and that of their unborn child in the case of expectant mothers) by boosting their iodine intakes using salt as the carrier.

For more on the benefits of iodized salt, see the Salt Institute website, http://www.saltinstitute.org/37.html .