Name: Jamae K Bruton
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Question:
How does the body assimilate iron? Specifically in fortified cereal?
Replies:
Wow, that's a tough one! How does the body assimilate anything it needs?
You get most of your nutrients through your diet. A great many things
are taken up non-selectively through digestion, but specific mechanisms
exist for others. Since iron is used in every one of your billions of
red blood cells, and since these are dying constantly, your body has a
real need for iron (though I believe it recycles some of the iron from
dying rbc's). But I don't really know if there is a specific molecular
mechanism that selects iron and iron only from food.
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