Heavy metal for breakfast?

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I guess you could take all the iron out of your diet if you want. But you'd die pretty soon.

Your body needs lots of different minerals and metals to survive. Iron being one of those.

Why would you think it's bad to find iron in an iron-fortified food? Better stay away from red meat too, if you're iron-averse.
 
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My grandfather told me about being diagnosed with low iron as a kid (about 1910). The doctor instructed him to take a handful of horse shoe nails and put them in a pint jar. Then add water until all but the tops of the nails were covered. Once rust began to cloud the water he was to take a Tbsp if the water everyday! Iron water! Sounds better over cereal.
 
Haertig said:
I guess you could take all the iron out of your diet if you want. But you'd die pretty soon.

Your body needs lots of different minerals and metals to survive. Iron being one of those.

Why would you think it's bad to find iron in an iron-fortified food? Better stay away from red meat too, if you're iron-averse.
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Mineral iron I'm good with, iron shavings not so much.
 
Magus said:
Mineral iron I'm good with, iron shavings not so much.
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Iron is an element. Minerals are compounds. Some mineral compounds contain the element iron. I assume that is what you mean by "mineral iron". But even if a mineral contains iron, that iron it contains is an element (and it is also a metal, although not a "heavy metal"). Your body can digest iron just fine, as long as it is fine enough. The iron in cereal is fine enough. The element iron, which your body needs, can be contained in a cereal, or contained in a mineral, of contained in other foods as well (like a steak). Eat any of those. They're all fine (well, maybe not every mineral that contains iron, but we're only talking about edible/digestible things here).
 
Elemental iron, calcium, and others are only digestible as salts. The metals are treated with acid until the acid is used up - it is then a salt. (short version)
 
Won't those flakes of Iron perforate our guts? I'm talking about natural sources of iron, not literal flakes of metal which are showing up.
 
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Those were not flakes of iron in the video. It was an extremely fine iron powder. When you separate the iron from the cereal with a magnet, and add fluid while doing that, the powder will clump up due to the moisture. But it is not a "flake" as may appear in the video. Take your fingers and squash that "flake" and it turns back into powder. It doesn't actually "turn back" since it never changed in the first place. It just "unclumps".
 
Before vitamins were available every where, my mother was pregnant.
She said the dirt on a potato smelled delicious.
My grand father told her to take a spoon and go in the woods and find some dirt that smelled good and to eat some.
Today we know this is called pica. The lack of minerals.
 
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Never saw the video, but am with Haertig here.
 
Ditto. its an old folk remedy to bake certain kinds of earth and grind it up to be used as seasoning!
A dear wise woman told me once, that if you are sick, go eat what you are craving, your body is telling you that is what it needs to fix you!
No matter how crazy it seems.
 
As a chronic anemic that gets liquid iron pumped into my veins and have taken every iron under the sun, this doesn't actually freak me out. I don't think those are actual metallic shavings. They essentially opened up a capsule of iron into it.

If you don't need the additional iron your body will expel it; too much can cause GI discomfort, though: cramps; constipation etc. But there's not enough in the cereal to cause such a problem. The doctor had me on ridiculous amounts of oral iron; it was miserable. That doctor totally didn't care that he was overdosing me and the amount of pain I was in. He did other things. I got rid of him, eventually. He wasn't a very good doctor.
 
Magus said:
Ditto. its an old folk remedy to bake certain kinds of earth and grind it up to be used as seasoning!
A dear wise woman told me once, that if you are sick, go eat what you are craving, your body is telling you that is what it needs to fix you!
No matter how crazy it seems.
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After an earthquake in Haiti a number of years ago, one of the things that I learned was that if there is no food, mothers make dirt patties for their children to eat. It can't be all bad, but in a place like Haiti, I would want to heat it up to kill parasites that might be there.
 
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