Iron Man IRL is not really desirable

Popeye the Sailor Man helped popularise the idea that large quantities of iron in your diet is a good thing.

While iron is important to make the red blood cells that carry oxygen and serve as catalyst for vital biochemical reactions in your cells, it is NOT of much help for developing biceps bigger than your head.

But the idea of its importance remain, and you can see most processed food are touted to be enriched in minerals (which is what iron is) and vitamins. Have we gone overboard with our enthusiasm for fortified food?

Have a look.



Judging from the video, I'm thinking that maybe a year's worth of breakfast cereal is sufficient to craft a single nail. That amount would kill ya.

Lucky for you, your liver does a fantastic job of getting rid of undesirable stuff in your body (sadly, not the extra 20 lbs obscuring your six pack) and you can do it all without supplements for detox. Yay for physiology evolution!

Iron toxicity is rare; it is usually seen in people who have to undergo high volume blood transfusion because of anaemia. As a deliberate poison of choice, it takes too long to kill the victim, so murderers should stick to something a little bit more fast acting.

However, there have been cases of children who died from iron toxicity courtesy of multivitamin overdose.

Yep, those cute, tasty, colourful, chewy tablets CAN CAUSE DEATH.

After all, children are small and their juvenile livers are incapable of removing excess iron effectively. Makes it easy to build high concentration of iron in their body enough to kill them. Children with their penchant for sweets and crunchy candy often like multivitamins enough to keep badgering you to give them the tablets.

*That* is why those kiddie multivitamin bottles have WARNING LABELS telling you to KEEP THIS BOTTLE OUT OF CHILDREN'S REACH.

You have been warned.