3 ms·

OK, I'm going to put my hand up here and say I don't know what I'm on about... but hear me out. Cereals have iron in them, literally iron shavings are put into

by buro9 16y ago

OK, I'm going to put my hand up here and say I don't know what I'm on about... but hear me out. Cereals have iron in them, literally iron shavings are put into cereals to ensure that the population receive a good portion of the RDA. Iron is particularly susceptible to induction (all metals are, but iron moreso), and iron when exposed to an electrical magnetic field then magnetic hysteresis is going to occur resulting in the iron in the cereals taking on a much stronger magnetic field than is currently natural. Has this kind of effect been investigated such that this kind of packaging is known not to have any negative effect on the consumers of magnetised food? Additionally, my second thought concerned the use of RFID for stock check, and whether a shelving system laced with induction systems is going to interfere with RFID in any way? Basically... I'm trying to invent reasons this might not appear on a shop-shelf soon. I really don't want to enter a supermarket and be presented with something that looks like Vegas.

jamesbressi 16y ago
I'm not sure why you got down voted but I bumped you up one. Fascinating question regarding iron! Whether a realistic issue or not, I love when someone thinks of something offf the wall that didn't cross my mind. As for the RFID question, without going into length, no interference should occur
arethuza 16y ago
"literally iron shavings are put into cereals" Are you sure about that, I would have thought that iron would be in a compound form, not in the metallic form. For example food supplements use things like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron%28II%29_sulfate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron%28II%29_sulfate
- buro9 16y ago
  Nope, it's just iron shavings: http://www.mcrel.org/whelmers/whelm07.asp http://www.mcrel.org/whelmers/whelm07.asp "The iron in the cereal is pure iron! Really! It is the same iron found in nails and automobiles. It is mixed in the cereal batter along with many other additives. The very tiny particles of iron quickly react with hydrochloric acid and other chemicals in the digestive tract, changing to a form easily absorbed by the body." That's a secondary school lesson guide for a science class in which the students extract the raw iron shavings from the cereal. It's a trivial process (you need a magnet, some water, and some crushed cereal - high iron content cereal obviously yields more dramatic results). The Times also has an educational piece on extracting iron from cereal: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article2499454.ece http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertai... You can see in this video the extracted iron: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V265pGgsBnM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V265pGgsBnM View from 2:30.
  - buro9 16y ago
    And now I've done a quick bit of Googling, I think I'd loosely speculate that iron with strong magnetic fields, consumed, might affect the performance of some medical equipment that use magnetic fields to perform their detection. Specifically MRIs can detect oxygen carrying red blood cells because of the iron in hemoglobins and the change in magnetic strength when oxygen is attached to the red blood cell. Hemoglobins are apparently renewed, in part, by digesting iron (in things like cereals). A wikipedia entry on MRI suggests that the sensitivity of FMRI (functional MRI) is fine enough to determine brain activity based on the magnetic response of hemoglobins. So if the consumed iron had a stronger magnetic memory, this could have an effect on measurements of existing medical equipment which is tuned to the current norm. I clearly have disclaimed that I don't truly know what I'm on about... I'm speculating. But I'd love to hear what these guys think: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1522-2594 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1522-25...
  - arethuza 16y ago
    Cool - I disengage my skepticism in the face of you informative response.
khafra 16y ago
Considering that the powerful magnetic fields used in MRIs don't harm people at all, and that magnetic fields in general have no effect on our health, I don't think microscopic amounts of magnetized iron are going to have the FDA very alarmed.
sbierwagen 16y ago
Nope. Hysteresis is a short term effect, measured in seconds. Full on magnetization won't happen to microscopic particles of iron at room temperature and atmospheric pressure in a tiny, rapidly changing, magnetic field. And even if they became as magnetized as they possibly could, (which isn't very, because these are small particles) they're still going to be digested, reduced to single atoms, and bound to transferrin/ferritin/hemosiderin/hemoglobin proteins. Metallic iron doesn't naturally exist in the human body. The only people NMR imaging is contraindicated for are metalworks and such who are routinely exposed to high velocity metallic iron fragments, (via angle grinding, etc) that mechanically embed themselves in the skin, fingernail beds, eye orbits, etc. Completely unnoticeable in everyday life, less so when you climb inside a superconducting magnet. Also, they're not shavings; they may be produced that way, but food-grade iron is milled down to a fairly fine mesh. It's a powder. There's no sharp edges. Mild aside: Iron was so rare in the ancestral environment that humans never evolved a mechanism for excreting it, and it's heavily recycled. All ingested iron is metabolized, which means iron poisoning is fairly easy. This means that breakfast cereal, which is popular with children, who tend to have very low body weight, doesn't contain much of iron. The box of corn flakes I'm looking at only has 108 milligrams of iron in 340,000 milligrams of corn flakes.
- buro9 16y ago
  Ah, interesting. Although, now you've removed my ability to create a real objection to this packaging beyond "Ah, the goggles, they do nothing".
  - ams6110 16y ago
    Well don't despair too much, there's still plenty of good reasons to avoid the heavily processed organic matter that is "breakfast cereal"
yummyfajitas 16y ago
I don't think much investigation is warranted. When your body absorbs iron, it breaks it up into it's constituent atoms which are already magnetized. The only difference between magnetic and non-magnetic iron is that magnetic iron has a larger percentage of it's atoms aligned in a specific direction. (Actually I'm oversimplifying a bit, see the wikipedia article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferromagnetism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferromagnetism ) Further, like most terrestrial humans, you spend your entire life living in a magnetic field. I'm willing to bet it's vastly stronger than anything emitted by these cereal boxes. If you are truly concerned, you can test this by putting a compass next to your cereal box.

by buro9 16y ago

jamesbressi 16y ago

I'm not sure why you got down voted but I bumped you up one. Fascinating question regarding iron! Whether a realistic issue or not, I love when someone thinks of something offf the wall that didn't cross my mind. As for the RFID question, without going into length, no interference should occur

arethuza 16y ago

"literally iron shavings are put into cereals" Are you sure about that, I would have thought that iron would be in a compound form, not in the metallic form. For example food supplements use things like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron%28II%29_sulfate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron%28II%29_sulfate

buro9 16y ago
Nope, it's just iron shavings: http://www.mcrel.org/whelmers/whelm07.asp http://www.mcrel.org/whelmers/whelm07.asp "The iron in the cereal is pure iron! Really! It is the same iron found in nails and automobiles. It is mixed in the cereal batter along with many other additives. The very tiny particles of iron quickly react with hydrochloric acid and other chemicals in the digestive tract, changing to a form easily absorbed by the body." That's a secondary school lesson guide for a science class in which the students extract the raw iron shavings from the cereal. It's a trivial process (you need a magnet, some water, and some crushed cereal - high iron content cereal obviously yields more dramatic results). The Times also has an educational piece on extracting iron from cereal: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article2499454.ece http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertai... You can see in this video the extracted iron: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V265pGgsBnM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V265pGgsBnM View from 2:30.
- buro9 16y ago
  And now I've done a quick bit of Googling, I think I'd loosely speculate that iron with strong magnetic fields, consumed, might affect the performance of some medical equipment that use magnetic fields to perform their detection. Specifically MRIs can detect oxygen carrying red blood cells because of the iron in hemoglobins and the change in magnetic strength when oxygen is attached to the red blood cell. Hemoglobins are apparently renewed, in part, by digesting iron (in things like cereals). A wikipedia entry on MRI suggests that the sensitivity of FMRI (functional MRI) is fine enough to determine brain activity based on the magnetic response of hemoglobins. So if the consumed iron had a stronger magnetic memory, this could have an effect on measurements of existing medical equipment which is tuned to the current norm. I clearly have disclaimed that I don't truly know what I'm on about... I'm speculating. But I'd love to hear what these guys think: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1522-2594 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1522-25...
- arethuza 16y ago
  Cool - I disengage my skepticism in the face of you informative response.

khafra 16y ago

Considering that the powerful magnetic fields used in MRIs don't harm people at all, and that magnetic fields in general have no effect on our health, I don't think microscopic amounts of magnetized iron are going to have the FDA very alarmed.

sbierwagen 16y ago

Nope. Hysteresis is a short term effect, measured in seconds. Full on magnetization won't happen to microscopic particles of iron at room temperature and atmospheric pressure in a tiny, rapidly changing, magnetic field. And even if they became as magnetized as they possibly could, (which isn't very, because these are small particles) they're still going to be digested, reduced to single atoms, and bound to transferrin/ferritin/hemosiderin/hemoglobin proteins. Metallic iron doesn't naturally exist in the human body. The only people NMR imaging is contraindicated for are metalworks and such who are routinely exposed to high velocity metallic iron fragments, (via angle grinding, etc) that mechanically embed themselves in the skin, fingernail beds, eye orbits, etc. Completely unnoticeable in everyday life, less so when you climb inside a superconducting magnet. Also, they're not shavings; they may be produced that way, but food-grade iron is milled down to a fairly fine mesh. It's a powder. There's no sharp edges. Mild aside: Iron was so rare in the ancestral environment that humans never evolved a mechanism for excreting it, and it's heavily recycled. All ingested iron is metabolized, which means iron poisoning is fairly easy. This means that breakfast cereal, which is popular with children, who tend to have very low body weight, doesn't contain much of iron. The box of corn flakes I'm looking at only has 108 milligrams of iron in 340,000 milligrams of corn flakes.

buro9 16y ago
Ah, interesting. Although, now you've removed my ability to create a real objection to this packaging beyond "Ah, the goggles, they do nothing".
- ams6110 16y ago
  Well don't despair too much, there's still plenty of good reasons to avoid the heavily processed organic matter that is "breakfast cereal"

yummyfajitas 16y ago

I don't think much investigation is warranted. When your body absorbs iron, it breaks it up into it's constituent atoms which are already magnetized. The only difference between magnetic and non-magnetic iron is that magnetic iron has a larger percentage of it's atoms aligned in a specific direction. (Actually I'm oversimplifying a bit, see the wikipedia article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferromagnetism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferromagnetism ) Further, like most terrestrial humans, you spend your entire life living in a magnetic field. I'm willing to bet it's vastly stronger than anything emitted by these cereal boxes. If you are truly concerned, you can test this by putting a compass next to your cereal box.