The spectrophotometric kinetic method was validated for the determination of iodine in different food samples. The method is based on the iodide catalysed reduction of Ce 4+ to Ce 3+ by As 3+. The absorbance of the kinetic indicator reaction was measured at 370 nm for exactly 1 min at 37°C. The change in absorbance per min, as a measure of initial rate, was plotted against the different iodine concentrations to achieve a linear calibration equation with the R 2 value of 0.9998 which showed excellent reproducibility. The limit of detection (LOD) was 1.54 ng/mL and the limit of quantification (LOQ) was 4.90 ng/mL. The incineration of the food organic matter was achieved by ashing the food samples at 600°C using KOH and ZnSO 4 in steps for 3 h. Trace levels of iodine (ng) were determined successfully using the validated spectrophotometric kinetic method for the 9 food samples (36 sub-samples). The Fiji seaweeds, lumiwawa (brown seaweed) showed the highest iodine content being 6373.30 ± 0.39 ng/g followed by sea grapes (green seaweed) 1162.81 ± 0.61 ng/g, lettuce 114.81 ± 0.08 ng/g, English cabbage 108.40 ± 0.06 ng/g, Chinese cabbage 104.01 ± 0.06 ng/g, pumpkin 101.24 ± 0.08 ng/g, long bean 97.61 ± 0.10 ng/g, banana 76.18 ± 0.10 ng/g and tomato 40.32 ± 0.04 ng/ g. The coefficient of variation for the sample analysis was < 5.31% with a mean and standard deviation of 2.55 ± 0.17% for the food samples analysed. The recovery analysis of iodine from standard samples ranged from 99.84 ± 0.91% to 100.24 ± 5.92% with an excellent average recovery of 100.06 ± 3.16%. The analytical coefficient of variation was calculated to be 0.34% for the food samples analysed. This shows exceptional system analytical stability of the method used in this study.