Can licking an iron bar get you the daily recommended amount of iron?
Can licking an iron bar get you the daily recommended amount of iron?
How many licks would it take? Can the iron in bars even be processed by the body? Can you do this for other minerals?
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 🤷♂️
This specific thing? Or just an iron chunk of some type?
The reason I know about this is the social aspect of trying to get people with endemic iron deficiency to use a supplement. If you're from the more industrialized would, I'd figure you'd take supplements that, while more expensive, may or may not be more effective.
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).
referring to this: https://luckyironlife.com/pages/lucky-iron-story
I had a bowl of nails this morning…without milk
Yeah, well I stubbed my toe last week while watering my spice garden, and I only cried for 20 minutes.
Did you at least include the shrimp
No, he'd already left for work. Also he said he doesn't like it when I call him that.
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.
And which is more bioavailable, metallic iron or iron oxide? Do we want to lick clean iron or rusty iron??
You can get all the iron you need from vegetables and certain meat or even taking supplements. There's no need to go about eating rusty metal. In fact, my doctor has advised me not to eat nails. I have to trust what he says, he's printed out several impressive medical degrees.
Gives a whole new meaning to this.
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.
So, I don’t know where this iron bar is coming from.
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.
What about sticking 5" iron nails into your nose?
Asking for a friend
They're about four inches too short, mate.
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
When my wife was pregnant, a buddy gave her an old cast iron pan and told her to heat applesauce in it. Said it should help her iron deficiency, too bad we're to add to have remembered....
This is the reason prisoners are so healthy and full of vim and vitality. (right........)
UMMM I don't think you can get iron in your diet this way. First off, it's unlikely you're going to find a bar of pure iron anyway, since most metal bars are composites of many minerals.
Also, the iron has to specifically be in an ingestible form so the liver can process it. An iron bar ain't a lollipop. (maybe that should be a slogan for something).
When they say that cereal has added iron, they really mean that actual bits of iron are added (very tiny particles). You can use a magnet to pull some of them out, they're little iron filings.
So if you file the bar down first and eat the filings, MAYBE it would contribute to your iron intake. But - why not just grab some milk and eat the cereal instead?
Quick Google search suggests that using cast iron cookware increases your iron intake. I'd imagine the heat process has something to do with it though, so still incredulous that licking an iron bar would be effective, though I'm at a very minor maybe.
Japan has traditional iron kettles (that are stupidly expensive) and they're often mentioned by doctors for use in people who have iron deficiency here. That or iron pans. They even make an iron ball to put in normal kettles and such, but that weirds me out a bit.
good question
