Heavy metal toxicity

Dietary minerals are essential for normal body function, but in too large an amount causes heavy metal toxicity. These include:
Manganese
Iron
Copper
Chromium
Zinc
Selenium
Cobalt

Essential vitamins A, D, and E can also be toxic

Toxic metals not necessary for normal body function, but which also cause heavy metal toxicity are:
Lead
Mercury
Cadmium
Silver
Thallium
Tin
Berylium
Aluminum

Toxic metals can bioaccumulate in the body and in the food chain

Toxic metalloid: Arsenic

toxic nonmetalloids/hallogens: flouride, chlorine

Toxic organic compounds: phosphorus (pesticides: organophosphates), nitrogen (cyanide, nicotine), alcohol

Venom, toxins, and food poisoning are also found in fish/seafood, other vertebrates, arthropods, poisonous plants and poisonous fungi.

See chart

...Okay. So that was a mouthful. Just found that off Wikipedia. Anyways...

We bought a wheat grinder. It was actually a corn grinder, at La Mexicana grocery store in Othello, WA, where I was actually looking for and bought a cheap tortilla press. But, I saw this grinder that was $25, and it grinds corn! Corn I hear is the hardest grain on earth, and some grinders don't grind. So, we didn't have a grinder, still don't, so we bought this. Got home, and it didn't do much more than crack wheat. I guess I could have tried cracked wheat bread, but for some reason I'd prefer that my grinder made flour. So, we found a tightening bolt, and tightened a little, then a little more, then a lot, and it cracked and broke. But it would have been worth the gamble to get a $25 vs. $300 grinder, right?

Well, the wheat grinder and the tortilla press are made with this real shiny coating, I'm not sure what. My husband sees bright shiny little shavings in our cracked wheat. Pretty alarming. We ate it anyway. Once won't hurt, right? But, I'm kind of glad we had our little $25 test run/failure, because it got me thinking about what kind of materials are grinding our grain? You know they come with options to buy more stones once the stones where out, and where did the stones go? In your food, of course.

So, its interesting to think about, if you wanted more iron in your diet, would you get iron grindstones? What if you were getting too much iron anyway, then what kind of stone would you use? And what exactly is steel anyways? (Several grindstones are made of steel.) So, yet another little hang-up on the wheat grinder shopping. I know. I think I've taken this one a little too far. Its probably no big deal. But I did learn about heavy metal toxicity in the meantime, and the delicate balance of getting the right nutrients, and leaving others out.

My husband did come up with this ingenious idea: to get veterinary magnets, like they use for cows, and rub it in the finished product flour, to get some of the metal out. Just have to make sure that the kind of metal your grinding with is attracted to magnets.