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adamant2009 t1_irealaj wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in TIL A 2017 study found that the introduction of iodized salt in 1924 raised the IQ for the one-quarter of the population most deficient in iodine. by kstinfo

Holy shit, that's significant. I figured the effects were more modest.

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dj_narwhal t1_irelx5k wrote

Imagine the fox news talking heads complaining about an attack on conservative values if we just discovered this and were trying to implement it now.

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zoicyte t1_iremxev wrote

you jest but there are definitely people who protest iodizing salt the way florodizing water is protested.

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Pepe_von_Habsburg t1_irepixw wrote

Can you Americans shut up about politics for one millisecond?

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RipMySoul t1_irgvcyv wrote

Would you prefer for us to overly confident? America #1

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Gemmabeta t1_irf6z1q wrote

It's not so much that everyone got smarter as we've managed to eradicate an extremely serious cause for profound mental retardation (congenital hypothyroidism).

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MattheJ1 t1_irfvtx1 wrote

Measurable intelligence has been steadily rising since the 50s, and arguably longer. It's hard to say how much of that is from salt.

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Dalmah t1_irgocvj wrote

Aren't we getting weaker too? Something like the grip strength of humans who were hunter gatherers far exceeded modern day?

If so it's like we're redoing our fallout built and moving stats from strangth into intelligence

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huunhuurtuu t1_irlcjqp wrote

Our brains are smaller too tho. Our jaws are also getting smaller and weaker. Kinda like wolf to dog transition. We are kinda domesticating ourselves and I doubt we are actually smarter now.

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Dalmah t1_irlcugk wrote

The brain being smaller doesn't neccesarily mean we are getting stupider, the correlation between brain size and intelligence is weak.

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