[delinka]

How do you get people to consume spirulina? Preference and taste get involved. Everyone eats salt. Salt was used to preserve things. Salt is used as a flavor enhancer. Salt is consumed far more ubiquitously than anything else. And, it doesn’t spoil if you dont consume it all in a couple weeks.

[mitchtbaum]

Again, by that logic, you could justify anything.

"How do you get people to ____" is a fundamental question in life with many approaches to answering it, ie marketing, public relations, missionary studies, theater, etc.

[civilitty]

Are you being intentionally obtuse? You asked why salt, he answered with literally the most important reason in public health: people actually use it. It is a known delivery vector that works, period.

And, yes, no shit. How to get other people to do something is a fundamental question in life and it just so happens that in life, public health is about getting people to do stuff that's good for their and society's health.

[fhood]

Your question has been answered explicitly twice. Perhaps you are actually asking something else?

[mitchtbaum]

Yes. How can we help improve nutrient availability, generally?

From what I pointed out below, this salt processing seems to have underappreciated trade offs. But most importantly, the overarching picture of nutrient availability, not just for iodine, seems to have a bigger challenge at hand worth solving than simply using salt as a vehicle for one - which spirulina would help with in terms of protein and mercury / biotoxin removal, for example.

[buttcoinslol]

You fortify staple foods with nutrients. Such as SALT, bread, milk, etc.

The point is that you don't go looking for a new thing for people to consume to get them the nutrients they need, you fortify what they already eat.

[Turing_Machine]

Spirulina is not a good source of iodine anyway. Unlike kelp, which grows in iodine-rich ocean waters (and which is a decent source of iodine), spirulina is generally grown in alkaline inland lakes (read: iodine-depleted).

[nkrisc]

And it this case it appears that spending a buck to iodize a few tons of salt is probably easier or at least easy enough that it doesn't make sense to go through the effort to switch to something else.

[dragonwriter]

Yeah, but salt, unlike many other alternatives, was almost universally used—no challenges getting people to use it—and is ideal as a vehicle. So salt it was.

And, sure, there may have been some other equally good alternatives, but analysis paralysis helps no one. So, salt.

[computerex]

I don't know what idealistic/philosophical point you are trying to make, but we also do things like water fluoridation. Salt happens to be a very convenient medium for iodine.

[knieveltech]

Or you could dispense with all the uphill iceskating and simply put it in salt.

[coldtea]

>Again, by that logic, you could justify anything.

Nope, you could justify very specific pragmatic approaches, just like the parent did.