iron in breakfast cereal

Factual Questions
1

I am a high school physics teacher. I was in a workshop the other day, and the workshop facilitator showed a video about a grade school teacher doing an experiment with her students on “extracting iron from breakfast cereals.” The experiment went something like this: crush up a bunch of breakfast cereal in a bowl, add a lot of water, then take a plastic-coated magnet and stir it around in the cereal. After a few seconds of stirring, look at the magnet with a magnifying glass and by golly, there are a bunch of iron bits stuck to the magnet.

I call bullshit on this experiment. Granted, I don’t know much about food additives, but I don’t really think iron is added to cereal in elemental form*, such that it can be extracted by the use of a magnet. I don’t argue that the magnets may be picking up some ferromagnetic bits in the cereal, as the cereal is no doubt sorted by machine and there are bound to be some metallic shavings that work their way in (and that won’t harm you but also won’t help you in the sense of being absorbed into your body when ingested).

Thanks for any info!

-Tofer
*An online search turned up many similar experiments, and a few mentioned that “food-grade iron particles (metallic iron)” is, indeed added to cereals. This is very surprising to me. In other words, General Mills dumps iron shavings into Total? Fishy.

2

Cecil Adams on Do “iron fortified” cereals really contain iron filings? Short answer: Yes, sometimes iron-fortified cereals really do contain elemental iron.

3

You know, I searched the forum, and I forgot to search the SD archive. Thanks for the link. “The particles can range from straight powdered iron (“reduced iron”) to compounds such as ferrous sulfate and ferric phosphate.” The powdered iron still surprises me, but ferrous sulfate and ferric phosphate make sense. Cheers!

-Tofer

4

I had a teacher do a similar experiment once, either in grade school or junior high. Don’t recall the brand, but a magnet did pull little filings out of mashed up cereal bits. Most of us kids had the same reaction…yuck! :slight_smile:

5

Mr. Wizard actually did this experiment once, either on his 80s Nickelodeon show or in a spot on Letterman, I forget which.

6

Cooking with an iron skillet is sometimes recommended to people who have trouble keeping their iron levels up.

7

I’ve heard that doing this experiment with whole wheat Total cereal will give the same results.