The Mother and Child Foundation

In many inland villages, diets are seriously lacking in iodine and omega-3. A report to the WHO and the Indonesian government, in 1993, found:

Inland villages had 60% of their children with palpable goitres.

Coastal, fishing, villages had 1% with the same problems.

1,000,000 school children were mentally retarded.

800,000 of these were affected severely enough to meet the definition of cretinism.

Recent studies have found this repeated in Sudan, Tibet, and other places – it’s likely to happen anywhere that populations cannot afford to import seafood. The Mother and Child Foundation is working to investigate large scale cultivation of kelp, as a dietary source of iodine and omega-3 fatty acids. Just 1 gramme of kelp per day will provide enough iodine to restore the balance.

We are also discovering the importance of nutritional assessment in advance of dietary support (see news), and the ways that iodised salt falls short of being an ideal supplement.