CYP Now - Opinion: Iodine is vital to foetal brain development, so let's act now

This is a story of scientific advance and unexpected consequences - and actions we really ought to take now. Before the first phases of industrialised farming in the early 1800s, many people in the UK suffered from a variety of dietary deficiencies. The most important lack was of iodine - although this was not understood at the time, the element itself not being discovered until 1811. Although we need only trace amounts of iodine that are much less than one thousandth of a gram per day, the lack led to visible symptoms and severe mental retardation - the "village idiot" was not a rarity, but all too common.

Some parts of the country were badly affected - "Derbyshire Neck" was a recognised term for goitre (the swelling of the thyroid gland). During the agricultural revolution, farmers started to feed their cattle with all sorts of foodstuffs to eke out their valuable grass and it was discovered, by chance, that seaweed - kelp, which happens to be rich in iodine - was both useful for cattle feed and led to healthier and more productive cattle. Without understanding the "why", farmers across the country started adding kelp to cattle feed simply to improve productivity.

There was an unexpected side-effect as the cattle produced milk with enough iodine largely to eliminate deficiency in the general population, so goitre and the associated developmental problems became largely historical. Once scientists started to understand nutritional issues more fully, iodine was added to cattle feed in a more systematic way, as it still is, and some table salt was supplemented with iodine - "iodised salt".

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