What are the best iron food sources do we need steak to get iron do we need iron supplements?
Iron is one of the most misunderstood nutrients
So today we're going to cover everything we need to know to just enjoy our food and stop worrying about iron so much
All right. Quick question just for fun
Which food has the most iron?
Is it beef lentils milk or chia seeds pause the video if you need more time answers coming up
and here are the answers a three ounce serving of steak has about 14% of the daily needs for the average woman
Men need a lot less iron. We'll come back to this in a minute. How about the same amount of lentils?
15.5 just slightly more almost same. milk? no iron in milk. Basically zero. How about Chia?
a Whopping seventy seven percent. chia's got iron for days. Even if you took a much smaller amount just two tablespoons of chia
That's basically one of those little chia puddings that's almost 20 percent of your iron needs right there
And that stuff is delicious. So does that mean everybody needs to be eating chia all day?
Of course not you can if you want to and they're fantastic, but you don't have to because iron is
Everywhere, here's chickpeas here's steamed spinach here's sesame seeds. This is eggs. And that's liver
Okay
I think the point is clear just like we saw with protein before
iron is everywhere and in large amounts. We can get all the iron we need from animal foods or from plant foods
It's your choice
So many people worried about getting enough iron, about iron deficiency iron foods
Iron supplements and yet it's so abundant. You could almost say it's ironic, but I'm not gonna say that no puns in this video
I'm gonna keep it professional. Okay, great
So iron's abundant plenty of good food sources of iron but so far we've only looked at isolated foods
what I want to know is at the end of the day after I've had all my meals 15 20 different types of food all
Mixed do I get all the iron I need in the protein videos I used this example
breakfast oatmeal and a peanut butter sandwich
Later in the morning handful of almonds
Lunch is lentils rice and broccoli with a banana for dessert and dinner is tempeh with mixed veggies
okay, that example is all light meals in fact it only has about
1,500 calories 2,000 being the ballpark goal for a day so it's no where near a full day of eating yet
It already maxes out iron needs for women
If you're a man
You've already had two hundred thirty percent of your daily needs and you still have 500 calories to go so finding
iron in foods is not a problem
So if you like meat and you want to eat it, that's totally up to you
But don't let anybody tell you that you need meat for iron and that if you don't have a steak
You're gonna be anemic plant foods have boatloads of iron wait
Hold on a second
Fine plants have iron but iron isn't all created equal isn't the iron in meat absorbed better like more bioavailable?
There are two types of iron heme and non-heme
Meat has both types while plant foods like lentils and sesame seeds only have non heme iron
So is it true that heme iron is better absorbed?
The answer is it depends the amount of iron that actually gets absorbed into your body
Depends on what else is in your food
For example vitamin C is a major factor if there's no vitamin C in sight
We can absorb more iron from a meal containing meat than a meal without it
But if vitamin C is present the difference goes away
So does that mean if I don't eat meat I need to eat an orange at every meal to get my iron? not at all
Vitamin C is in all kinds of fruits and vegetables a small stalk of broccoli or half a bell pepper
Would give you enough vitamin C to get this effect coffee and tea can also influence the absorption of non heme iron
But they have the opposite effect of vitamin C instead of helping they block absorption
So if you have trouble getting enough iron you may want to have your coffee and tea in between not during meals
Okay, so if heme and non-heme iron are absorbed differently
It sounds like the best bet is to just mix it up and have a bit of both, right?
Some steak some lentils
the problem is absorption is not their only difference the long-term health effects of heme and non-heme are also
Massively different heme iron has been tied to higher risk of disease over and over again
higher risk of cardiovascular disease higher risk of cancer
Higher risk of diabetes and this seems specific to heme iron the type found in meat
how big is the risk? each additional milligram of heme iron consumed daily has been associated to anywhere between 7 and
27 percent higher risk of cardiovascular disease
Again, that's per milligram. We need multiple milligrams of iron per day 8 for men 18 for women
So these studies strongly suggest we lean as much as possible on non
heme to meet our daily requirements and as we've seen that isn't hard at all even light meals with plant foods have plenty of iron
Studies confirm meat-free diets can actually contain more iron and people who don't eat meat don't have higher risk of iron anemia
So all that iron in the plants is effectively absorbed and utilized. No problem
now all of that said if you're somebody who has trouble getting enough iron, if you suffer from iron deficiency anemia then of
course you want to work with your doctor and in some cases a supplement may be justified studies do show
huge differences in iron absorption between different people
So if you have trouble getting enough iron then these little tricks we talked about
Become even more important including veggies with your meals, especially vitamin C
rich ones
like broccoli and bell peppers or
sprinkling some lemon on your legumes
Avoiding having coffee and tea with your meals and you can also consider iron fortified cereals if you need that extra boost
Playing with all these factors can increase iron absorption by up to 10 times by getting as much as possible of our iron from plant
Foods, we're also getting the healthiest kind non-heme which helps keep our risk of disease as low as possible. Not a bad deal
see?
I kept it professional the whole way through no lame puns didn't say anything was
Ironic didn't say the issue of iron was a magnet for controversy. None of that lame stuff
Just kept it professional focused just for you I resisted it. it was hard
it was tempting but I resisted it resisted it with an iron will ahhh
Alright, that's it for today. If you found this helpful, feel free to share it and I'll see you on the next one