Can licking an iron bar get you the daily recommended amount of iron?

R5v5n1nt@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 172 points –

How many licks would it take? Can the iron in bars even be processed by the body? Can you do this for other minerals?

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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.

Fair enough. Personally I don't think the words are an issue. It's not medically applicable, but it's just cereal, so *shrug*

put the ''words'' in quotes because in context it's definitely ''absurd bullshit'' and this is how i know that key on my keyboard doesn't work i have to use a different key so thanks

How is it "absurd bullshit"? Do you think it's somehow a different element? At worst, it's as bullshit as any other vitamin supplement, in that it's technically helpful, but just far more than your body can make use of.

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Tiny amounts of iron distributed throughout a piece of cereal don’t have enough of a magnetic charge to lift the weight of a piece of cereal. Pieces of cereal dust with higher concentrations of iron very much could. Those results aren’t especially surprising

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