Leaning Vegetarian

Archive for the ‘Nutrition’ Category

My mom is concerned about my iron intake, now that we’re emphasizing vegetables and grains and reducing our red meat. Mom’s not randomly worrying – in years past I was anemic for a long time, and had to take iron shots and supplements.

So how much is that? Rachelle and I need 18 mg/day; Kaela can get by with 15 mg/day per the Dietary Reference Index.

Good news for Kaela – Cream of Wheat cereal has a bit more than 10 mg per cup (but the instant kind in the picture only has 8).

Some other amounts from the USDA lists:

There’s a lot of fortified cereals on that list; sorry about all the brand names but they show up high on the list, and do vary a lot.  Those tomatoes and refried beans might just be Monday’s lunch right there. (Though that’s rather a lot for lunch.)

Spinach ranges between 3 to over 6 mg/cup if it’s cooked, depending on whether it’s canned, frozen, or fresh (and frozen has the least, which surprised me).  Oddly enough, raw spinach has much less. Those beet greens in the picture run just under 3 mg/cup.

Alas, we don’t get all of that.

When I was anemic, I ate stacks of spinach, but spinach and other dark green vegetables have a drawback – while they’re very high in iron, it’s not in a form that’s as easy to assimilate as iron from meat sources. The NIH mentions that calcium, tea or other tannin-containing foods, and some components of legumes and whole grains hinder the most efficient absorption of iron. So it’s important to combine it with vitamin C, and to have calcium-rich foods at a different meal if you’re aiming for the maximum iron intake. Which isn’t to say that yogurt and spinach dishes aren’t good for you and delicious, just that you aren’t likely to get all the iron available in the spinach with that combination.

Balanced Diet

Collard Greens for Supper (Alisa Cooper)

This one hits home for me – my mom’s already been diagnosed with osteoporosis and has had some spinal surgery related to it.

It doesn’t seem too hard to get adequate calcium in a day, since I do eat dairy products – is it? I’m not real keen on plain milk, though I do use soy milk on cereals, and flavored soy milk to drink. I eat a fair bit of cheese and yogurt. Back to the numbers.

I need 1000 mg of calcium per day, so that looks like:

That’s just about right, if one doesn’t mind eating predominantly dairy for their calcium – what else is a good source?

Looking at the USDA list was a real surprise. Collards (357 mg/cup) and sardines (325 mg/3 oz) are above plain milk (306 mg/cup nonfat)? And cornmeal (483 mg/cup) above all three? The good news for the day, if you have a sweet tooth like mine, is that thick vanilla milkshakes are high up on the list (457 mg/11 oz, if you don’t mind 351 calories). And I’m curious as to why nonfat yogurt has more calcium than low fat yogurt. Anyone know this? I’ll make a note to look it up.

I can see I’m going to have to find more greens recipes so we’re not relying too heavily on dairy products. What if you don’t eat dairy? I will see if I can track down some recommendations for the lactose-intolerant. What are your favorite non-dairy calcium sources?

There’s a joke floating around on the internet that goes something like this:

How many vegetarians does it take to change a lightbulb?

Just one, but where do you get your protein?

Of course there are other things than meat that have protein. We eat them regularly, even when we are eating meat dishes too. Off the top of my head, some of these in the last few days have been

black beans
yogurt
brown rice
hash browns

The better question is how much do we need? I looked over at the USDA site at the Dietary Reference Intakes provided by the National Academy of Sciences .

If I scroll down to the Macronutrients page I see that for me, a 49-year-old female, I need about 46 grams of protein per day.

Cool. But what does that mean? Taking the list above for example, I’d have:

(These numbers are taken from the list from UC Davis and the USDA National Nutrient Database.)

So it’s not a particularly hard task to get enough protein – another 1-2 grams for some juice plus 6 for an egg at breakfast, some peaches and cottage cheese (up to 28g for a cup), and I’m good for the day.

What’s your favorite protein source?