Nutrition facts of breakfast cereals list percents of vitamins. What are the recommended amounts in mg?
Saturday, June 27th, 2009 at
1:40 PM
If a cereal says it has 25% daily Iron, for example, how many mg of Iron does the average person need? How much iron does the cereal have?
Filed under: Nutrition
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Hi Rockaholic
The RDA for iron changes quite a bit depending on age and sex. According to a US government fact sheet, for males 19-50, it's 8mg and, for women the same age, it's 18mg. Pregnant women, 27mg.
Children often have low iron and so do menstruating women. Men, especially as they age, should be very careful not to take too much iron and probably get enough from what they eat. If they have hemochromatosis, the iron-loading disease, they need to give blood or have it removed by a doctor in order to reduce the overload.
Because men, and post-menopausal women don't lose blood every month, avoiding multivitamins with iron is generally recommended. Suspected anemia in older adults should prompt, not automatic supplementation, but an investigation into a source of inflammation or internal bleeding. Anemias are sometimes accompanied by iron-loading.
Some critics also believe that too many iron-fortified items in the food supply is causing more harm than good. Consumers of these foods could be receiving too big an overall dose.
Getting too much iron over time can cause organ damage.
I hope that helps!
The FDA recommendation is 18mg of iron daily. So that cereal would have 4.5mg.