Ramona Josephson, RDN


Are you constantly tired, sluggish, irritable? You may be low in iron. Iron helps deliver oxygen to your body. Too little iron means too little oxygen, which results in fatigue, weakness and headaches. A deficiency occurs most often in people who lose iron through blood loss for example from heavy menstruation, pregnancy, surgery, injury or blood transfusion. It may also occur if you avoid eating meats.

One of the challenges to consuming enough iron is that the iron content of a food does not tell you how much will be used by your body. Choose iron-rich foods:

• Animal foods such as liver, beef, lamb, pork, veal, poultry (especially dark meat), fish and seafood contain iron in a heme form that is easier to absorb.
• Plant foods contain iron in a non-heme form. Good sources include legumes (dried beans, peas and lentils), dried fruit, nuts, seeds and fortified breads and cereals. However non-heme iron is not as well absorbed.

• eat a small amount of meat, fish or poultry with your non-heme meal
• include a vitamin C rich food with your meals, eg add strawberries to your cereal, drink orange juice with your meatless chili, cook peppers in your tofu stir-fry.
• cook acidic foods such as tomato sauces in an iron pot. Some of the iron seeps into the food.
• wait for at least one hour after a meal before drinking tea, coffee or cocoa. They contain polyphenols which interfere with iron absorption.
• Avoid taking a calcium supplement with an iron-rich meal. Calcium interferes with iron absorption.