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.…