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Some kind of iron piece is given in some African countries to fight iron deficiency by putting it in the food while it's cooking, so it works.
Not necessarily licking (I mean, if you do it enough...), but this is a thing
Cool story with interesting social, cultural, and scientific interactions.
It may have been discredited outside of simple iron deficiency since I last read about it, but dietary studies on humans are notoriously difficult to do.
I believe cooking in cast iron pots/pans also provides a source of iron as well.
Certainly makes sense.
We used one of these with our daughter when she had a concerning iron deficiency. I'm not super sure if it helped since we also started feeding her more iron containing foods, but it didn't hurt 🤷♂️
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Cooking in a cast iron pan adds more iron to your diet
https://www.foodnetwork.com/healthyeats/healthy-tips/how-much-iron-do-i-get-from-a-cast-iron-skillet
A little cat iron puck was introduced in an Asian region with high iron-deficiecy in the poorer population, but nobody used it. So they did some research and changed it to resemble a fish instead and it took right off. Turns out the local culture considered fish lucky or something.
I actually teach my students about this strategy that the WHO employee in Micronesia in my sport nutrition class. It's less about the iron fish, and more about that dietary iron can come from cast iron cooking sources instead of supplementation (as the latter often causes digestive distress).
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I had a bowl of nails this morning…without milk
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Yeah, well I stubbed my toe last week while watering my spice garden, and I only cried for 20 minutes.
Wouldn't want the milk to prevent the iron absobtion.
I saw someone do a demonstration once, they took a box of "iron-fortified" breakfast cereal, dumped it into a bowl, then ran a magnet through it. The magnet picked up some of the dust from the bottom of the bowl, that dust being the tiny iron particles that were added to the cereal to "fortify" it.
I'm not sure why you're putting those words in quotes as if they're incorrect.
I put them in quotes as the word has no objective meaning as applied to a breakfast cereal, it's simply a marketing term. I did not intend to imply that ingested iron particles are not a valid source of iron for human biology.
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And which is more bioavailable, metallic iron or iron oxide? Do we want to lick clean iron or rusty iron??
Let's ask Mr. Owl.
One...
Two-hooo...
Uh-three- breaks beak on iron bar
US RDA age 19+ is 8 mg / day. Maybe if the iron bar is really rusty. Or, pills are cents a day. OR you could eat breakfast cereal or liver, lentils or spinach, Popeye.
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/iron-HealthProfessional/#h2
Breakfast cereals made of liver and spinach feel like an unexplored market
Licking a rusty bar seems like it would be a good way to abrade your tongue and contract tetanus.
Tetanus is a bacteria that lives in soil. It's only associated with rust because rust gives more surface area to allow dirt to accumulate on which bacteria can survive, and because iron objects are often sharp enough to pierce the skin. If you were cut with a gleaming razer that had just had soil smeared on it you'd have a good chance of contracting tetanus!
~~It's also because the bacterium in question is anaerobic, so it dies in an oxygen environment; rusting consumes oxygen, so it helps preserve the bacterium longer out of soil.~~
Edit: I had always been told this, but evidently it isn't true. The rust does not seem to have any effect on the bacterium that causes tetanus. Apologies for spreading misinformation.
I'd be quite surprised if rusting could consume oxygen fast enough to make a difference there?
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Does that mean I can get tetanus by walking around barefoot outside?
If your feet get cut, sure. This is why tetanus vaccine is given as post-exposure prophylaxis in many places if you get a wound that breaks the skin.
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I've read once that eating iron won't do anything for your iron intake, but for example sticking some rusty nails through an apple for a while and then eating the apple would.
I think you'd lose just as much iron if not more iron in the blood you'd lose consuming that apple.
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It's hard to imagine there's no culture in the world that would've adopted this as a practice.
One suggestion in the old days was to stick a nail in an apple for a while and then eat it. The apple of course. Without the nail
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this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2023
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