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Putting history to the test
I loved the question in “Digging up the Past” in your last issue as to whether “taking one or two teaspoons of filtered seawater at each meal will heal rheumatism, a goitre and ‘listless children!”, as a reader claimed back in 1968.
I was quite surprised by the answer – that there isn’t enough iodine in two teaspoons of seawater taken three times a day to cure goitre. I thought there was a very good chance it was a winner!
Even in 1970, well-respected textbooks on human nutrition were showing New Zealand alongside other goitre hotspots in the world. Normally the lack of iodine in the diet is associated with being far from the sea. Since seawater contains iodine, seafood and seawater sprayed onto the land results in enough iodine to supply human needs. New Zealand is an exception to this due to the high rainfall washing away the highly soluble iodine from our soils. Case in point,
