Four ways to reduce unwanted iodized table salt reactions when boiling pasta

Medical Xpress / American Chemical Society / Environmental Science & Technology ^ | March 1, 2023 | Huiyu Dong et al

[ConservativeMind]

Iodized salt helps prevent iodine-deficiency disorders, including goiters and certain birth defects. Yet it's unclear how this seasoning interacts with chloramine-treated drinking water if some of the disinfectant is left behind. Now, researchers have demonstrated that cooking pasta in such water with iodized table salt could produce potentially harmful byproducts. But they also report four simple ways that people can reduce or avoid these unwanted compounds.

In most countries, drinking water is treated with chlorine or chloramine. But small amounts of these disinfectants can end up in water used for cooking. Previous experiments showed that when wheat flour was heated in tap water that contained residual chlorine and seasoned with iodized table salt, potentially harmful iodinated disinfection byproducts could form.

The researchers cooked elbow macaroni in tap water, which had been treated with chloramine, and salt. The team measured the amounts of six iodinated trihalomethanes, which are potentially toxic compounds, in the cooked food and pasta water. They detected all of the iodinated trihalomethanes in cooked noodles and pasta water, but the cooking conditions significantly impacted the amounts.

Based on their results, the researchers identified four ways to reduce possible consumption of these substances:

- Pasta should be boiled without a lid.

- The noodles should be strained from the water that they're cooked in.

- Iodized table salt should be added after the pasta is cooked.

- Iodine-free salt options, such as kosher salt and Himalayan salt, should be used if home cooks want to boil pasta in salted water.

As the team explains, boiling pasta without a lid allows vaporized chlorinated and iodinated compounds to escape, and straining noodles removes most of the contaminants. Adding iodized salt after cooking should reduce risk of byproduct formation, but non-iodized salts are recommended if salting the water before boiling.

[TTFX]

people who do not consume seafood on a regular basis, need iodine

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Milk can be high in iodine.

[Red Badger]

From seacows?.....................

[ansel12]

I miss the days when all this female nonsense was kept to the women’s section of the newspaper.

[logi_cal869]

BTTT

[murron]

I’m 74 years old and have been using ionized salt to boil pasta and potatoes as long as I can imagine.

[Paal Gulli]

...- Iodized table salt should be added after the pasta is cooked....

If they think that'll taste the same, they're idiots.

[Lurker]

Use kosher salt.

L

[TTFX]

Just remove the iodine from the salt before cooking.

[Mozzafiato]

Does anyone cook pasta with the lid on? It creates quite a mess if you do it that way in my experience.

Nobody that I know in my very large, extended Italian family. You bring the water to a boil with the lid on, then take the lid off, add the salt and then the pasta and cook without the lid. It will be on overflow disaster if the lid were kept on.