Here’s a gram of calcium. Care to eat it?

According to the US National Institute of Health’s guidelines most adults should be getting at least this much. Perhaps to make it a bit more appetizing they prefer the euphemism of going with measurements in thousands of milligrams (would getting a bill in pennies seem easier to pay?) but it’s safe to say that most would be shocked to find out how we’re putting nearly a pound’s worth of this metal through our guts over the course of a year.

The surprise, of course, is that most people don’t think of calcium as a metal but, perhaps, the ingredient that makes cheese yellow and milk white. When speaking of calcium, every nutritionist refers to it as a mineral which technically refers to the chemical combination of two or more elements but, to be fair, outside of an argon-filled capsule calcium promptly loses its metallic character and turns to lime. Calcium’s high sensitivity to oxygen (and nitrogen) is the reason why it’s never found in its elemental state in nature and why many people are surprised to learn that it’s a metal at all.

Anyway, this ampule houses a beautifully oxide-free sample which you won’t be able to resist shaking around. No worries, it is much too light to crack the glass! Oh, and definitely don’t eat it.