Video: How to see the iron in your cereal
You need iron – but fortified foods are now being blamed for diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Let New Scientist guide you through the menu minefield
NEXT time you are in a supermarket, take a closer look at the bread you buy or your cereal packet – you might be surprised to see how many of these staples are fortified with iron. In fact, cereal products make up a whopping 45 per cent of our average daily iron intake.
That may seem like a good thing, if it wards off iron deficiency and anaemia. But evidence is emerging that decades of fortifying food with iron and regularly popping supplements could be leading people to ingest more iron than they need.
While the effects of this overload are still up for debate, some scientists believe that it could be damaging our health – and the prevalence of diseases like diabetes and heart disease could be a symptom of this excess. What’s more, too much iron seems to be a source of cancer-causing free radicals.
“Iron overload degrades the chemical structure of DNA, predisposing us to everything from heart disease and stroke to diabetes and obesity,” says Leo Zacharski at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire. “It’s a far stronger risk factor than smoking for all sorts of clinical disorders.”
The primary use of iron in the body is in haemoglobin proteins, the part of red blood cells which carry oxygen to tissues. If you don’t have enough iron in your body, because there’s not enough in your diet or you can’t absorb enough…