Diet for Iron-Deficiency Anemia

There are the basic rules to using diet (pin addition to iron supplements) to prevent anemia.

If you are not a vegetarian, eat 3-4 servings of lean meat, poultry, or fish daily. If you are vegetarian, eat leafy dried fruit, green vegetables, and molasses as often as possible.

Cook in iron pots and pans. Use vinegar and juices in cooking as much as possible. Some iron leaches out of the cooking ware into the food. More iron leaches out if food is cooked in an acid liquid containing lemon juice, wine, or vinegar. If you cook with iron utensils be sure not to serve the food on unglazed dinnerware. The acid media that extract iron from cooking ware also extract lead from improperly fired pottery.

If you are relying on diet alone to correct iron-deficiency anemia, a little iron won’t help. Your body will only become efficient at extracting the iron from food if you provide it with high iron meals for at least 3 to 4 weeks.

Eat vitamin-C rich foods with high-iron meals (or take a 100-mg vitamin C supplement with each meal, more vitamin C is not necessary and 500-mg doses can actually interfere with iron metabolism when you are just beginning to correct anemia). Avoid coffee, tea, blueberries, buckwheat, and herbal teas for at least two hours before and after high-iron meals. They contain tannins that interfere with iron absorption. Generally, any bitter food contains tannins. Avoid bitter foods while you are overcoming iron-deficiency anemia. Also, avoid drinking tea or cooking with the herb rosemary. Green tea or rosemary extract added to foods reduces absorption of the iron from plant foods (but not the iron from meat, poultry, or fish).

And here are additional important considerations:

Iron-deficiency anemia is most likely to strike children around their first birthdays. Babies who are iron-deficient tend to lag behind in development throughout childhood and may be linked to later development of attention deficit disorder, so early recognition of the problem is essential. Symptoms of iron deficiency in infants include lethargy irritability, swollen tongue, brittle nails, and sores at the corners of the mouth. Breastfeeding provides enough iron for baby, but cow’s milk does not. Iron-fortified formula or iron-rich foods are necessary if baby is not breastfed.

The most easily absorbed form of iron in food is heme- iron, particularly abundant in liver but also found in meat, poultry, and fish. Your body can absorb the iron in liver nearly as well as it can absorb the iron in a supplement tablet. In contrast, your body can only absorb about 5 percent as much iron from the best plant sources of the mineral, dark leafy greens, dried fruits, and molasses. High-fiber plant foods contain phytate, which reduces iron absorption even more. Any food to which iodized salt is added loses available iron.

Coffee interferes with the absorption of iron, but your overall absorption of iron is not affected by drinking up to four cups a day if you also take vitamin C. Black tea, on the other hand, reduces iron absorption whether or not you take vitamin C.
Fiber reduces absorption of iron. Never take iron supplements with a meal including high-fiber foods.