What is the difference between iron ore, iron and iron in the nutrition list?
The quick answer is iron is iron regardless of where it comes from however a better answer is: 1. Iron ore is iron dug from the ground. At this stage it is just earth that has a lot of iron in it. It still has to be purified because it has all sorts of other minerals and stuff mixed in with. The process of extracting the iron from everything else is called smelting. 2. Iron is a metal solid and hard. Work it with carbon and you get steel. Iron by itself can be worked into nails and in old days it was worked into things like armor and swords. 3. Iron on the nutrition list is the same iron but it has been reacted with other chemicals to let the body absorb it (chemically it is an iron salt). In the very old days knights would take their iron swords and put it in water overnight then women would drink the water to cure maiden's disease (anemia--low iron in the blood). In modern days it is usually iron reacted with sulfuric acid to make iron sulfate which is a common iron supplement. The acid makes an iron salt which the body can absorb. Hope that helps
Iron ore is what is mined, iron is a chemical element (Fe) and iron in the nutrition list comes from foods. I heard that you can get nutritional iron by cooking in a cast iron skillet.
Ore is any of the minerals that can be smelted to get iron, like hematite or pyrite. Iron is the element of Iron. it is alloyed with carbon and other metals to make steel. Iron in the nutrition list is iron in biological compounds like hemoglobin in blood. Elemental iron is not useful for a human to eat.
