Boring old iodised table salt should make a comeback Tatjana Baibakova/Alamy When I was at uni, I had a biology lecturer who was obsessed with iodine, and whose life’s work had been tackling global dietary deficiencies. He urged us to always use iodised salt, telling us it had raised the IQ of whole nations and was one of the greatest public health inventions of all time. I still hear his voice in my head every time I’m in the salt section of the supermarket. In recent years, however, I have found it increasingly difficult to even find iodised salt on the shelves. Over time, it has been crowded out by fancy-looking Cornish sea salt crystals, Himalayan pink rock salt, smoked salt flakes and Kosher salt. The few remaining containers of iodised salt come in drab packaging and look deeply uncool. This makes me wonder: are we about to undo all the benefits that have come from this unassuming food additive? Iodine is an essential dietary mineral that the thyroid gland uses to make key hormones …