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

  • Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • PetDinosaurs@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • body_by_make@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      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 🤷‍♂️

      • PetDinosaurs@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • body_by_make@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          Our daughter was less than 12 months old and had a cow milk protein allergy that was causing her to throw up most of the formula we were giving her (the allergy took us a while to figure out). We opted for trying to improve iron intake before going to pills, though if she was still deficient at her next check up that would have been what we did.

              • PetDinosaurs@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                You should change your thought process and listen to the experts.

                They also would have recommended dietary changes if they actually were applicable. It is this kind of belief that leads to increased harm and is solely the reason why so many children are being harmed and killed by extremely preventable causes.

                I’m not accusing you of being someone as heinous as an antivaxxer, but this is the thought process that leads people down that path.

                • wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one
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                  1 year ago

                  Im pretty sure the experts already talked with them back when the kid was having the problems

                  And for infants, doctors also prefer dietary changes before medicine, for incredibly obvious reasons

                • body_by_make@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  1 year ago

                  Trust me, I’m nowhere near an antivaxxer, if the pediatrician pushed even slightly harder for medicine as the solution then we’d have gone that way from the start. They were fine with us trying diet adjustments first and doing another visit soon after to see if the issue was resolved (it was).

                  I understand the concern though.

                • NJA@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Do you even have kids? My daughter had low iron and all we had to do was give her less milk

    • Etterra@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • Davel23@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Ech@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I’m not sure why you’re putting those words in quotes as if they’re incorrect.

      • Davel23@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Ech@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

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

      • awnery@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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

        • Ech@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          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.

        • idiomaddict@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          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

        • Urist@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 year ago

          Grammar is just “rules” and “rules” were invented by “humans”. You can put “quotations” around whatever you “want”, nobody can “stop” you.

          Be the “absurd bullshit” you want to see in the world! Breakfast cereal “is” a scam!

  • MoodyRaincloud@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Unaware7013@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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…

    • BaroqueInMind@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      a buddy gave her an old cast iron pan and told her to heat applesauce in it

      Did she mention how the apple sauce sounded like? Why even involve the cast iron pan, and just simply squirt some directly into the ear canal?

  • tygerprints@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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?