The Ministry of Health and Welfare has modified food additive standards to increase potassium iodide concentrations in iodized salt after the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) found that 51.2 percent of Taiwanese lack sufficient iodine intake.
Amendments to the Standards for Specification, Scope, Application and Limitation of Food Additives is to require potassium iodide concentration in iodized salt to be increased from the current range of 12mg/kg to 20mg/kg, to 20mg/kg to 33mg/kg and would be enforced after six months, the HPA said.
The ministry’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said iodized salt manufacturers would face a fine of between NT$30,000 and NT$3 million (US$90,807) if they fail to meet the standards after they come into effect.
HPA Director-General Chiou Shu-ti (邱淑媞) said that a 2013 survey showed the median urinary iodine concentration of people above six years old was only 99 micrograms per liter — below the minimal concentration of 100 micrograms per liter recommended by the WHO — adding that iodine is a necessary nutrient to maintain healthy functions of the thyroid gland.
Thyroid hormone deficiency can lead to fatigue; intolerance to cold; goiter and obesity caused by slow metabolism; mental and physical developmental delay in children and teenagers; impairment in mental function, such as memory loss, in adults; hypophrenia (mental deficiency); extreme fatigue; depression and slowdown in mental responses, the HPA said.
Long-term iodine deficiency can also cause disruptions in the menstrual cycle and infertility in women, or cause even more serious consequences in pregnant women, such as miscarriage, still birth and congenital abnormalities, it added.
As for concerns about whether people would consume excessive levels of iodine after the policy is enforced, the HPA said if an individual consumes 6g of salt per day — the maximum daily consumption recommend by the administration — the person would be consuming an iodine supplement of about 120 to 198mg, much lower than the amount of iodine that would be taken by consuming a kelp knot, so the risks of iodine over-consumption from salt is low.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching