You know that moment when you get a piece of information and suddenly your whole life feels like a lie?
Like finding out the correct orientation of a bobby pin? Or that Blue of Blue's Clues was a girl dog? Or that iron is iron?
Okay, maybe not the last one for most of us, but for The Basement Yard podcast cohost Joe Santagato, he just found out the hard way— i.e. in front of his 3.3 million followers—that the iron in our food is the same as metal iron.
In a clip posted to TikTok, Santagato laughingly told his cohost Frank Alvarez that when he was a child, he believed the iron in his cereal was actually iron.
Clearly, the joke was on him, and Alvarez had to break the news:
"It is."
Santagato was having a very difficult time believing the iron found in food is "deada** iron."
Eventually, the host accepted his newfound knowledge but not without questions.
At the end of the clip, an exasperated Alvarez said:
"I hope this gets picked up by one of those, like, hyper...Instagram...scientists that's like, 'Let's break this down a minute.'"
You can watch the TikTok below.
While viewers of the TikTok were highly entertained, many admitted they were in the same boat as Santagato.
@thebasementyard/TikTok
@thebasementyard/TikTok
@thebasementyard/TikTok
@thebasementyard/TikTok
Others, however, were well aware that "iron is iron."
@thebasementyard/TikTok
@thebasementyard/TikTok
@thebasementyard/TikTok
@thebasementyard/TikTok
But to get to the bottom of it, viewers summoned the expertise of "hyper like Instagram like scientist" Hank Green.
@thebasementyard/TikTok
@thebasementyard/TikTok
And he obliged, much to the creators' delight.
@thebasementyard/TikTok
In his stitch with @thebasementyard's TikTok, Green explained that iron is indeed...iron.
"It's literally little metal shavings."
He said a lot of other super-smart things, but ultimately educated viewers on the role iron plays in the body.
"It's the little tiny pieces which increase the amount of surface area per unit of mass, and that makes it more bioavailable, makes it easier for your body to take it in and use it, which does a lot of different things..."
"... but mostly in hemoglobin, which is the complex of proteins that holds onto oxygen and carries it through your blood to the tissues where it is then dumped off so that the cells can use it for metabolism."
Duh.
Basically, he noted, iron is an essential nutrient that our bodies need.
You can watch the stitch below.
Just a little food (and metal) for thought.