Saving Lives One Fish at a Time

Sometimes low-tech design is the best. And easy, elegant solutions are the ones that work. (Because complicated is a lot easier to mess up than simple.) This is the story of a fish. A lucky fish. A lucky, iron fish that is helping improve and even save lives in Cambodia, one cooking pot at a time.

According to Smithsonian (what can I say, I love Smithsonian), iron deficiency is one of the most common nutritional problems affecting almost half of the world’s population. (Almost half, wow.) About one half of that half have iron deficiency anemia which means their iron levels are so low that it can cause symptoms that can range from dizziness to cognitive impairment even to death. That is about quarter of the people on the planet. A quarter.

Eating right (meat, eggs and leafy greens) keeps most of the developed half of the world from suffering from iron deficiency, but that is not a realistic option for the rest of the population. What is a realistic solution? Putting a small lump of iron in your cooking pot. The iron leaches out the lump into the food; the food gets the iron into the blood. But who wants a lump of iron in their cooking pot. No one, it would seem. But, if the lump of iron is in the shape of an awfully cute, lucky fish. Well, that works. Because who wouldn’t want a lucky fish in their cooking pot?