Get out the magnets (Score 1)

I am all for packaged functional food, but one thing you have to be careful about is these functional foods which supply the body with 100% of the recommended daily intake of one vitamin or mineral.

Take Total cereal for instance. They say it is the breakfast of champions. It supplies us with 100% of our daily requirement of iron. However the way they get it in the cereal sort of scares me. They grind up the iron and add it into the mixture. You can actually extract the metal flakes from it. Crush up the cereal into a fine powder, add water to it and drop in a strong magnet. Stir it for a bit. When you pull out the magnet there will be iron shavings attached to it. You can't eat steel, so the flakes have to be small enough so that the stomach is able to dissolve the particles.

But is this healthy? Yes and no. Iron in small amounts causes no harm. Unfortunately, studies are finding that too much iron can cause kidney damage. Since Total cereal gives you 100% of your daily need for iron, then any other iron that you digest is too much. This is probably not a problem, unless you take iron supplements, in which case you could be in trouble.

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