Saturday, December 16, 2006

Iodized Salt Makes You Smarter Than Borat

There's a neat article in the NYT about efforts to iodize salt in Kazakhstan. Iodization is cheap and prevents many health problems. The PR battle is the hard part, and the iodizers rose to the challenge:

One female volunteer went to a bus company and rerecorded its “next-stop” announcements interspersed with short plugs for iodized salt. “She had a very sexy voice, and men would tell the drivers to play it again,” Ms. Sivryukova said.

Even the former world chess champion Anatoly Karpov, who is a hero throughout the former Soviet Union for his years as champion, joined the fight. “Eat iodized salt,” he advised schoolchildren in a television appearance, “and you will grow up to be grandmasters like me.”

Mr. Karpov, in particular, handled hostile journalists adeptly, Mr. Zouev said, deflecting inquiries as to why he did not advocate letting people choose iodized or plain salt by comparing it to the right to have two taps in every home, one for clean water and one for dirty.

1 comment:

SHOWCASE said...

I had an Iraeli girl live with me and ask me which were the dirty taps. She literally did not believe that you could drink out of any tap in the house.

It really blew her mind that she could pretty much drink out of any tap anywhere.