Canadian’s lucky iron fish saves lives in Cambodia

[Shwa]

TIL - that you can affect iron intake by cooking with a chunk of iron in your pots. I had no idea. My wife is anemic, but refuses to take the brutal iron pills. I wonder if she would cook an iron fish.

Canadian’s lucky iron fish saves lives in Cambodia

GUELPH — At the heart of this tale is a lucky little fish.

How it became the answer to a dire medical problem deep in the Cambodian jungle is something University of Guelph researcher Christopher Charles swears is no fish tale.

It began three years ago when this science whiz from Milton, who had just graduated from Guelph with a bachelor in biomedical science, took on a gritty little summer research gig in Cambodia. The task was to help local scientists try to persuade village women to place chunks of iron in their cooking pots to get more iron in their diet and lower the risk of anemia. Great in theory, but the women weren’t having it.

It was an enticing challenge in a country where iron deficiency is so rampant, 60 per cent of women face premature labour, hemorrhaging during childbirth and poor brain development among their babies.

A disease of poverty, iron deficiency affects 3.5 billion people in the world. This was frontier research. Chris Charles was hooked — but he was also due to start his master’s back in Guelph.

Mere weeks before he was to leave, Charles called his academic adviser to pull the plug on his master’s in hormone research. To his credit, his adviser refused to let him quit. Instead, he told Charles he had found his true master’s project...