Am I Getting Enough Copper?

So this morning I’m eating a bowl of Multi-Grain Cheerios. During breakfast, you can either stare blankly into space or read the cereal box. Now Multi-Grain Cheerios don’t have fun little games on the box like Frosted Sugar Balls do, so I have to make do with the nutritional information. That’s when I noticed that my Cheerios have 2% of the RDA of copper.

Now of course I’m familiar with iron as a nutrient, I even remember when Mr. Wizard blended up some corn flakes and sucked the iron filings out with a magnet. That was a few decades ago, so my memory of it may not be 100% but I’m pretty sure he said, “See Timmy? When they say iron, they fucking mean iron.”

I’m also aware of zinc and magnesium as dietary metal requirements, and a quick perusal of the Periodic Table of the Elements reveals that even sodium and potassium are alkali metals. But copper? I’d never heard of copper in one’s diet, let alone a recommended daily allowance of the stuff. I quickly investigated the pantry.

The only other product I found that listed copper was a box of plain Cheerios (as opposed to the Multi-Grain ones). Apparently the makers of Cheerios are making a half-hearted (I mean, 2%? Come on!) attempt to stamp out copper deficiency. It wasn’t in any other cereals, or the graham crackers, marshmallows, chili paste or any of the other items I looked at. This would lead me to believe that unless I want to eat 50 bowls of Cheerios, I’m not getting enough copper in my diet. I find the idea that I should be eating copper far more disturbing than the idea that I’m not getting enough. I mean, I suppose I shouldn’t, it makes about as much sense as eating iron, but what next? Should I pig out on albacore tuna to get my RDA of mercury? And am I getting enough tungsten in my diet? And what of iridium?

Anyway, I’m going to start swallowing a penny every day I think.

All right, genuine curiosity got the best of me so I decided to look up why the fuck I need to eat copper. According to this pdf document it functions as a “component of enzymes in iron metabolism”. While this description isn’t exactly clear, I think what they’re trying to say is that copper helps you metabolize iron. That strikes me as ironic.