Leaning Vegetarian

Posts Tagged ‘vitamin c’

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