It’s common to hear people talk of traveling to Europe, eating bread, and not feeling the negative health impacts that they experience when they eat bread at home. What could be causing this?
I just finished reading the book Dumping Iron by P.D. Mangan. It is a short book, mostly collecting results of studies that show a correlation between high levels of ferritin (ferritin is a protein that stores and releases iron in the body) and negative health outcomes. It makes a case that many modern health ailments can be connected to fortified flour (and other grains).
Flour has been required by law to be fortified in the US since 1941 and in Canada since 1949. In Canada, it is illegal to sell unenriched flour or products made with unenriched flour.
Mangan’s basic case is that since many foods are now fortified with iron, the modern American (and Canadian) is consuming many times more iron than humans have during our history. Our bodies hold onto iron, and men especially don’t have a way of getting rid of excess iron. That excess iron in the body then leads to many different negative health outcomes.
Some of the most compelling evidence comes from measuring the ferritin levels of long-living people in blue zones (all very low) and from the much better health outcomes of people who regularly donate blood (donating blood is the best way to lower ferritin levels).
The history of fortifying food (and water) is somewhat dark and seems to largely be about selling industrial byproducts to governments and forcing them on people with sketchy arguments for health benefits (see: fluoride).
In Canada, the flour regulations require:
Flour, White Flour, Enriched Flour or Enriched White Flour, shall contain in 100 grams of flour:
0.64 milligrams of thiamine
0.40 milligrams of riboflavin
5.30 milligrams of niacin or niacinamide
0.15 milligrams of folic acid, and
4.4 milligrams of iron
So today, in 2024, we are subject to the nutritional opinions of the politicians who mandated this in the 1940’s. Strangely breaking these laws is also more likely to get you punished by police, meanwhile, people are shitting on the street in major cities without issue. That is a tangent for another day though.
Many countries don’t fortify flour and some even prohibit it, so it seems at least plausible that the reason for the “I ate it in Europe and felt fine” phenomenon is that the industrial byproducts used to fortify foods are causing health problems.
In the case of iron, a ferritin test is quite easy to get and the solution of donating blood is a good cause but also has many potential benefits with very little risk or downside.
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