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??
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
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.
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.
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
Permanently Deleted
make sure the iron is unplugged, first
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....
good question