Do not put lemons in your cereal!

This Popular Science blog post will be talking about vitamin C or its other name ascorbic acid, we will use the research done by Hassan Alamari [1] from the university of Jordan and research called ascorbic acid vitamin C and its effect on 18 minerals bioavailability in human nutrition from the year 2020. The aim of the study was to see whether in the presence of vitamin C certain minerals would be absorbed less.

So, the study’s method shows that in the presence of vitamin C there is less mineral absorption for minerals such as iron, zinc, and magnesium for example. They checked this by having ascorbic acid supplemented with other minerals and seeing whether the mineral concentration in the blood would be the same as just having the minerals taken orally. The implications of this would be that the next time you have food containing iron or any other kind of minerals such as cereal which contains iron you would not have ascorbic acid-containing foods with them this would provide full mineral absorption from the grain and so all the iron will be absorbed. Another benefit of this is that it can prevent anaemia which has different causes such as B12 and iron deficiencies.

However, it is proven the absorption of certain kinds of iron is actually increased by vitamin C or ascorbic acid and some mineral absorption is increased. Therefore, one should not totally discard their lemons.  but rather understand that this research is supposed to affect the composition of the food you eat. You would not have cereal and lemon juice together it is naturally a bad decision to do that. However, foods containing iron, eaten with lemons such as fish, have some other side effects. Vitamin C also known as ascorbic acid is necessary for the growth development and repair of all body tissues it’s involved in many body functions including the formation of collagen absorption of iron the proper functioning of the immune system wound healing and the maintenance of cartilage bones and teeth. Therefore, ascorbic acid is very vital for humans as seen in Fig.2 and gives energy, but with certain minerals, it inhibits the absorption of them.

References

[1] Alamery, H. (2019). ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C) AND ITS EFFECT ON 18 MINERALS BIOAVAILABILITY IN HUMAN NUTRITION.

Figure 1 Vitamin C molecule, Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C

Figure 2 Benefits of Vitamin C source: https://www.lybrate.com/topic/vitamin-c-benefits-sources-and-side-effects

One Reply to “Do not put lemons in your cereal!”

  1. Chris – I wonder if this implies that multivitamins containing Vitamin C and other minerals like iron are not as effective as just taking one vitamin/mineral supplement would be? I’ve heard that multivitamins are not nearly as beneficial as eating a balanced diet, in any case.
    -Edie

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