I'm skeptical of this, as I don't see how the oxidation state from the food will influence the resulting oxidation state once it is absorbed and in the blood st

I'm skeptical of this, as I don't see how the oxidation state from the food will influence the resulting oxidation state once it is absorbed and in the blood stream, or in a cell. For digestive absorption Fe3+ is reduced to Fe2+, and then it gets reoxidized to Fe3+ after digestive absorption. I would expect that different forms of dietery iron- reduced or not, protein bound or not, etc. would affect how well they are absorbed, but not affect the resulting oxidation state after absorption. I suppose I would need more details on exactly how they think the iron is being transported to the cells in these colon cancer situations.