Well, not quite:
The recommended daily intake is 11 milligrams for men and 8 milligrams for women. In a nation of plenty, it's easy to exceed those amounts.
There are more than 75 milligrams of zinc in six oysters, nearly 9 milligrams in a 3-ounce serving of cooked beef shanks, more than 3 milligrams in a cup of baked beans, 15 milligrams in a cup of some fortified cereals and 15 milligrams in many multivitamins...A typical, over-the-counter zinc supplement contains 50 milligrams. There are 13 milligrams in one popular brand of zinc lozenges.
I know that with flu scares running rampant, and in some cases being legitimate, a lot of people are looking for little boosters to fortify their immune system. In my bathroom, I have a bottle of zinc supplements, and sure enough, they're 50 mg. I'm just lucky that I'm forgetful enough that I don't take them everyday. However, as with most science, this article would be more accurate if it said that Zinc may cause problems.
Flinn and colleagues fed zinc-enhanced water to pregnant rats and to their babies after birth. The water contained hundreds of times as much zinc as normal tap water. Three months later, it took longer for the zinc-fortified rats to learn how to find a submerged platform in an underwater maze, compared with rats that weren't full of zinc.
The article goes on to mention a couple of other studies about the potential dangers of zinc, but it doesn't ever list any back-up studies. The ending sentiment is a bit of good sense though:
As we should have learned by now as a species; too much of anything is a bad thing.
When it comes to supplements, sucking on zinc lozenges as soon as you get a cold may help and probably won't hurt, experts say, as long as you don't suck on them all day every day for the entire flu season.
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