Kitchen gadget review: Lucky Iron Fish – I call this health tool Ozzy Ozbream

[helvella]

Rhik Samadder writes the Inspector Gadget column every week in the Guardian. Very often, it is humourous but sometimes is quite serious.

Today's column was a bit of a surprise!

Kitchen gadget review: Lucky Iron Fish – I call this health tool Ozzy Ozbream

Add one of these heavy metal nuggets to your cooking water to suffuse the liquid with enough iron to stave off anaemia – and you can help the world’s poor at the same time

Rest of article - and many comments - here:

theguardian.com/lifeandstyl...

Just remember - don't overdo iron. If you have sufficient, probably best avoid the lucky iron fish.

[BadHare]

Thanks helvella !

I meant to buy these as christmas presents last year, then forgot. You've reminded me to set several diary reminders next autumn. I like that the company donate one for each sold.

[Clutter]

More information in: healthunlocked.com/thyroidu....

[BadHare in reply to Clutter]

I knew I'd seen them on here! Thanks Clutter !

[megarub]

Has anyone used the Lucky Iron Fish and seen an uplift in their iron and ferritin levels?

[may save me slogging away with the weekly liver and onions...]

[TSH110 in reply to megarub]

megarub i bet that meal is why I became a vegetarian all those nasty gristly tubes and that strange almost powdery yet rubbery texture - a taste and consitency horror story! Onions were ok tho if a bit slimey. I hope I die having never to taste it again! Mind you with a culinary imagination like mine I only have to think about it and that darn stuff seems to be back in my mouth rolling around endlessly torturing me 🤣😂🤣

[megarub in reply to TSH110]

Don't TSH110!

You're talking to an [adult] lifelong vegetarian here, who practically had to have therapy and tranquillisers to embark on this liver trick.

Thing is, my bloods are now better on the iron side and the ferritin's going up slowly.

WHY IS NOTHING EASY?????

[helvella in reply to megarub]

megarub,

Iron in liver is in a different form to the "mineral" iron that you get from standard supplements and, yes, lucky iron fish.

It is absorbed by a different pathway and is less likely to cause gut issues. So there are very good reasons to consume liver - or, possibly, haem (heme) or ferritin supplements. Unfortunately, they are all animal sourced (I think).

[megarub in reply to helvella]

Helvella, I shall pin this up in my kitchen as go through my weekly liver-medication

[TSH110 in reply to megarub]

megarub I am no saint 30 years of vegetarianism sacrificed by scoffing my daily dose of NDT - those poor piggies dying so I can live. I salute you for succeeding in your weekly liver and onion ordeal and it is great you are benefiting perhaps Ozzy Ozbream will free you of the hepatic solution! Funny that NDT tastes of papaya not pork.

And on that I think you will enjoy this poem: And you know what thought did, by Simon Armitage which somehow seems pertinent to glaciers, Ozzy Ozbream, NDT and liver and onions although it’s about apples (and quite a bit more) it is very beautiful.

thisispoetryforthesoul.blog...

[megarub in reply to TSH110]

Wonderful TSH110!!

Another pin-up for the kitchen when the [segregated] chopping board and disinfected knives come out for this bloody weekly ritual ..

I wear a special pinny as well that goes in a hot wash straight afterwards.

[TSH110 in reply to megarub]

megarub howling with laugher here it has given me some entertainment as well as boosting your health!

[TSH110]

That article made me laugh what a curious and clever device.

I have two friends who munch furiously on ice cubes both suffer from anaemia ( one is hyperthyroid and the other is probably hypothyroid but in denial) - apparently it is a sign which always puzzled me till I saw a documentary about glaciers which it turns out contain water (as ice) and iron - lots of it - and nothing much else. That explains it. How we know this subconsciously and crave ice when anaemic seems quite amazing to me.

I have wondered if my penchant for Magnums (double caramel is my fave) could be down to more than pure lack of self control and greed 😂🤣😂

I have forwarded the Ozzy Ozbream info to both of them hopefully that wretched crunching noise will be a thing of the past as they get their iron levels up with that gizmo!

Looks like it has to be sea ice which I presume includes some glaciers

elementascience.org/article...

Some more quite interesting info:

oceans.mit.edu/news/feature...

[megarub]

having got my hopes up a bit that I could sidestep the liver and onions and buy a lucky fish instead, I now read this -

Conclusions: Neither the iron ingot nor iron supplements increased hemoglobin concentrations in this population at 6 or 12 mo. We do not recommend the use of the fish-shaped iron ingot in Cambodia or in countries where the prevalence of iron deficiency is low and genetic hemoglobin disorders are high. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT02341586.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/286...

another false dawn...

[TSH110 in reply to megarub]

Weekly plates of cheerful giver are here to stay on your menu then ☹️ Pity the iron Lilian Gish just doesn’t cut it!

[megarub in reply to TSH110]

I bet Lilian Gish had none of this trouble.

[TSH110]

megarub she did have problems with ice tho 😱

actress Lillian Gish lost the tips of her fingers to frostbite while being filmed floating on an ice floe towards Niagara Falls

[megarub]

ahhh ... but was she anaemic before she floated on the ice floe? We'll never know -