9 months ago
IQ: Intelligent Quotient.
Iodine was added to table salt in the U.S. since 1924 to reduce the incidence of goiter, an enlargement of the thyroid gland, but it had the unanticipated side effect of raising the national IQ by an average of 3.5 points.
Iodine deficiency today is the leading cause of preventable mental ***** ation in the world. It’s estimated that nearly one-third of the world’s population has a diet with too little iodine in it, and the problem isn’t limited to developing countries — perhaps one-fifth of those cases are in Europe, where iodized salt is still not the norm.
A group of economists saw a natural experiment: comparing the intelligence of children born just before 1924 — the year iodization began — and those born just after. James Freyer, David Weil and Dimitra Politi used military data from the early 1900s 1920s, when World War II drove millions of men and women to enlist.
Iodine was added to table salt in the U.S. since 1924 to reduce the incidence of goiter, an enlargement of the thyroid gland, but it had the unanticipated side effect of raising the national IQ by an average of 3.5 points.
Iodine deficiency today is the leading cause of preventable mental ***** ation in the world. It’s estimated that nearly one-third of the world’s population has a diet with too little iodine in it, and the problem isn’t limited to developing countries — perhaps one-fifth of those cases are in Europe, where iodized salt is still not the norm.
A group of economists saw a natural experiment: comparing the intelligence of children born just before 1924 — the year iodization began — and those born just after. James Freyer, David Weil and Dimitra Politi used military data from the early 1900s 1920s, when World War II drove millions of men and women to enlist.
The economists found that in the lowest-iodine areas — the bottom quarter of the study population — the introduction of iodized salt had stark effects. Men from these regions born in 1924 or later were significantly more likely to get into the Air Force and had an average IQ that was 15 points higher than their predecessors.
Nationwide, that averages out to a 3.5-point rise in IQ because of iodization.
Nationwide, that averages out to a 3.5-point rise in IQ because of iodization.
9 months ago
In response Edward Eduku to his Publication
