In this lesson, students will learn that minerals are a necessary part of our diet. They will learn that different minerals have different functions in the body. More specifically, they will discover that iron is necessary to carry oxygen around the body. In the associated activity, students will design a process that removes the most iron from the cereal.

One of the many things that food engineers do is fortify cereals and other foods with different minerals that are important to our diets. In this lesson, students will learn about how the food engineers fortify foods. Then, in the associated activity, the students will design a process to reverse engineer an iron-fortified cereal to determine how much iron it contains. food minerals iron nutrition This lesson should be taught after you have already taught about the main molecules in food (fats, sugars, starches, proteins, etc.). State that minerals are an important part of our diet. Know that different minerals have different rolls in our health and state some of them. Describe why iron is an important part of our diet. List several foods that contain iron. Describe why food engineers add iron and other minerals to cereal. State that the iron in our cereal is the same iron that is attracted to magnets. How many of you have seen an advertisement on television that said a cereal was fortified with vitamins and minerals? Have you ever had orange juice with calcium added to it? What do you think is going on with these things? Well, today we are going to answer all of these questions. Minerals are natural compounds that are a necessary part of our diet. They allow our bodies perform many vital functions. For example, they help us build strong bones, transmit nerve impulses, make hormones, and maintain a normal heartbeat. Therefore, it is important that we get enough minerals in our daily diet. Unfortunately, sometimes this is hard to do. This is why food engineers fortify several common foods with extra minerals. This means that they add minerals to foods that do not usually contain them. Today, we are going to learn about minerals. We will learn about the roles that calcium, iron, potassium, and zinc play in the body. Then, we are going to design a process to remove one mineral, iron, from cereal. By doing this we will be acting as reverse engineers. Minerals help your body grow and stay healthy. The body uses minerals to perform several functions. For example, they help you build strong bones, transmit nerve impulses, make hormones, and maintain a normal heartbeat. One important mineral is iron. Your entire body needs oxygen to stay healthy and alive. This is because the body needs iron to transport oxygen from your lungs to the rest of your body. Iron helps this process because it's important in the formation of hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is the part of your red blood cells that carries oxygen throughout the body. There are several foods that are iron rich including meat (especially red meat), tuna, salmon, eggs, beans, potato skins, and leafy green vegetables. People who do not get enough iron in their diet tend to become anemic. Anemia is a condition where there is not enough red blood cells in the blood. Due to the lack of red blood cells, there is also a lack of hemoglobin, which as mentioned previously carries oxygen. If the blood cannot carry enough oxygen to the rest of the body, problems will occur. The main symptom of anemia is fatigue. Also, chest pains and shortness of breath can occur. Moreover, people with anemia tend to have pale, pallid skin. Other effects of not getting enough iron include a decreased immunity to disease. Also, children who lack enough iron in their diet do not develop normally. While there are several foods that are rich in iron, many people have trouble getting enough in their diet. Therefore, food engineers often add iron to foods such as cereal. The process used to fortify the cereal is quite simple. The food engineers simply mix powdered iron with the other cereal ingredients. Several types of powdered iron can be used, but the most common types are ferrous sulfate and ferrous fumerate. When ingested, it is converted into iron that can be used by the body in your stomach. The iron mixes with the hydrochloric acid in your stomach to make iron chloride and oxygen gas. The iron chloride is absorbed by your small intestines. The amount of iron added to food is dependent on several factors. For example, the prevalence of iron deficiency in the group and the dietary trends of a culture contribute to how much iron should be added to cereal. Food engineers also add other types of minerals and vitamins to different foods. For example, orange juice is often fortified with calcium. Because not everyone eats cereal, food engineers are thinking of ways to deliver essential nutrients to people and kids in some of the world's poorest places. For example, some scientists and engineers have developed rice and salts that are fortified with different vitamins and minerals, including iron. This allows children all over the world to receive more nutrients in their diet because rice and salt are consumed in many different cultures. In this lesson, we will show that the iron found in food is the same type of iron that is attracted to magnets. The student will discover this by engineering a process to remove the iron in cereal. Natural compounds that are important in helping the body perform many vital functions. Mineral that is necessary to transport oxygen around the body (part of hemoglobin). Mineral that is helpful in building strong bones. Mineral that helps to keep muscles and nervous system working properly. Mineral that helps your immune system. To add one or more ingredients to a food to increase its nutritional content. An object or device that produces a magnetic field which attracts other magnets and certain metals. Cereal Magnets How were you able to remove iron from the cereal? Why do you think crushing the cereal (or other methods used) worked better? After your experiment how do you think that food engineers actually add all of the iron to the cereal? While this process may sound difficult, it is worth it so that you get enough iron in your diet. Because iron has an important role in carrying oxygen around the body, if you do not get enough iron you will feel tired. Moreover, if you didn't get enough iron in your diet for a long period of time you would not develop normally. Due to all of this, it is important that your food contain extra iron. What Does Iron Make You Think Of?: Ask the students to brainstorm what iron makes them think of. See if they can make the connection between magnets and iron in food. Changed Food: Ask the students to brainstorm some foods that they have eaten or seen that have extra nutrition added (or harmful things, such as fat, removed). Iron Removal Plan: After the lesson is introduced, ask the students to write a quick plan to get the iron out of the cereal. Ask them to explain why they chose their method. You should look at their plan before they begin work. Guide to Iron Removal: Ask the students to write or draw the steps of the process they used to remove the iron from the cereal. The students can act as if they are food engineers making a manual for other people. Removing Other Minerals: Ask the students to think about other foods they could remove iron or another mineral from. Ask them to make another plan for this process. There are several ways to extend this lesson depending on how you want to take the class. One way to extend the lesson is by having the students test the iron content of different cereals. The procedure to do this would be the same as in the activity repeated three times. Moreover, this activity can be extended by talking about how engineers add specific things to food such as other minerals and vitamins. Dietary Supplement Fact Sheet: Iron. Updated July 26, 2005. Office of Dietary Supplements. National Institute of Health. Accessed April 26, 2007. Minerals. Reviewed August 2004. Kids Health. Nemours Foundation. Accessed April 26, 2007. http://www.kidshealth.org/kid/stay_healthy/food/minerals.html Matsui MD, William. MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia: Anemia. 2005. A.D.A.M., Inc. Accessed April 26, 2007. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000560.htm Guidelines for Iron Fortification of Cereal Food Staples. May 2001. Sustain: Sharing United States Technology to Aid in the Improvement of Nutrition. Accessed April 26, 2007.