Getting enough Iron from food

[little monkey]

I want to make sure I get enough iron, as a menstruating female.

So out of interest, I checked out some values at nutritiondata.com for iron …

2 large egg yolks 0.9 mg
2 tsp molasses 2.4 mg
100g beef 1.7 mg
1 cup broccoli 0.7mg
½ cup cooked lentils 3.3mg

So even on a day of making quite an effort to eat high-iron foods, I wouldn’t get much more than 9 mg, when the recommended amount is 18mg.

I'm avoiding sugar, so having just 1 tsp molasses twice a day in my cleansing drinks.

I’m confused, how can I get enough iron from my daily foods?

[shelley]

It's impossible. One of my assignments as an undergrad was to come up with a diet that would attain the RDA for iron on 2,000 calories a day and I couldn't do it no matter how many iron-rich foods I included. I kept plugging different foods into the computer but no go. That's why it's important to get tested - physical plus ferritin levels, and to find a good iron supplement to take occasionally around menstruation.

So why are we not all iron-anemic? Because the RDA isn't always correct. Vitamins and minerals are like alcohol - no one really knows how much it takes to get you drunk. They give us inflated values for iron because we only absorb like 12% of what we eat. But getting plenty of Vit C helps absorption and utilization. As long as you're eating a wide variety of foods and including molasses and liver occasionally you should be fine.

[LILA1963]