Is it really possible to regain our energy and vitality…
to be the fun-spirited parent on the playground…
and to enjoy our lives and families with spontaneity, stamina, and even pizzazz?
…All while eating simple and tasty foods that bring us great nourishment and satisfaction?
Absolutely, the answer is “Yes” and if you want to do so in a way that is smart, science-based, and safe, then you have found the right place.
Dear Friend,
Iron deficiency affects 10% of young women and 10% of children. It robs us of energy which robs us of time with our families and friends. If you are among that large portion of the population, consider these questions:
- Have you felt so tired, even “bone-tired” with no apparent cause?
- Have you watched others dance at a club or a wedding and wished you had the energy for dancing?
- Have you watched energetic parents on a playground, running and chasing children, playing ball and hide-and-go-seek, and longed to have the energy to do so too?
- Have you wondered where your pep and spirit have gone? Have you never had it in the first place?
- Have you wanted to give blood at a blood bank to help others only never to pass their iron screening test?
- Have you looked at your child and wondered if the child would reach his or her potential if you could just improve the child’s iron levels?
- Do you eat iron rich foods (or feed them to your children) and still struggle with low iron counts?
If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, then there is a great deal of hope that your life is about to change. Let me explain.
Nutrient Deficiencies Are Thieves Of The Worst Sort
Nutrient deficiencies have in large part shaped a decade of my life. What I didn’t realize ten years ago is that nutrient deficiencies would cause the single-most catastrophic moment in my life.
After the birth of my first son in 2002, I suffered from severe depression with bouts of psychosis. When my son was weeks old, I watched him as he slept, saw his eyelids flutter, and thought the fluttering was due to demons watching me through his eyes. There was one moment when I considered smothering him with a pillow but I had him exorcised instead. As it turns out, particular nutrient deficiencies were implicated in my case of depression and psychosis.
Between those dark moments of 2002 and six years later in 2008, I worked hard to identify and fix the nutrient deficiencies that aggravated my depression. I even wrote a book on depression detailing the research I had found. During those years as I watched the biological clock tick and I headed directly into forty years old, more than anything else, I wanted a second baby. However, I was scared to death to go through another pregnancy. I was too scared to plan another pregnancy in fact.
Pregnancies have a way of happening whether you are planning or not and in December of 2008 I had a second baby in a depression-free pregnancy. There are many things I did in that pregnancy that helped me stay depression-free (and that is a whole other story I tell elsewhere), but a key factor is that I entered into that pregnancy healthy and nutritionally complete.
Giving my body the nutrients I needed helped me get through what is an extremely stressful time in every woman’s life: growing an entirely new human being.
I will be honest with you, though: Iron deficiency was a small part of my own story, but it is a big enough part of the story of many women I know, that iron deficiency got my attention when I wrote the book on depression and food nutrients. Iron deficiency actually plays a role in postpartum depression. One of the early readers of the depression book came to me with a powerful story on iron. Jennifer from northern California told me:
“Two years ago this week I was detained by the state of California and sent to a mental hospital for a 72 hour evaluation after a visit to the ER. I had not slept and barely eaten in 7 days. I was sure that God was going to take me home and that I would die in the institution. My baby was 9 weeks old. I turned a major corner about 3 weeks ago after about 6 intense weeks of nutritional supplements, amino acids, and traditional foods. I am convinced that rebuilding through nutrition will cure me. My B-6 and zinc levels are already increasing after 2.5 months. I had severe [iron deficiency] anemia and someone who I had not seen in a few months looked at me and said ‘You have color in your face, my dear!’”
Iron was a very big part of Jennifer’s recovery from depression. After two months of supplementation and an iron rich diet, Jennifer’s pale skin began to get color again. Her excitement over her improvement speaks to her added energy as well.
Doctors do try to watch our iron levels pretty carefully and so hopefully most of us won’t end up as a “5150,” as we like to call it here in California: legal detention for exhibiting signs of “craziness.”
I would like to think that most doctors catch our iron deficiency before we hit “crazy,” but doctors do not tend to catch our iron deficiencies before we hit “bone tired exhaustion.”
I would like to think that doctors find iron deficiency in our children before they hit that point of stunted growth and poor school performance, but some don’t.
Why In The World Are You Deficient In Iron?
(You Have Probably *Never* Heard This Reason)
You know that you are deficient in iron because you do not get enough iron in your diet. But why?
Do you realize that vegetables and fruit, basic garden produce that we buy at the market, have 15% less iron now than they did in the 1940s?
The iron content of produce has declined in the last 80 years by 15%.
Since the late 1800s, the United States government has actually collected data on the nutrient content of food. By 1940, it had a decent system for collecting the data and had a pretty good catalog of the nutrient content of food. How it has measured iron has changed and improved, but a researcher out of the University of Texas at Austin found that iron in small garden crops like broccoli and mustard greens has declined 15%.
If you were living 80 years ago, you would have more iron in your diet because the food itself would be more iron rich.
Was your grandmother or great grandmother iron deficient? Our great grandmothers got to eat more iron-rich food so, perhaps, they suffered less from iron deficiency than we do.
There is another powerful thing that our great grandmothers did that helped with their iron absorption: they often made sourdough bread.
Way back in the day before baking soda and baking powder, there was nothing but sourdough to leaven bread. Great grandma ate sourdough.
As it turns out, sourdough is one key baking method to unlock the iron in your food. Researchers have actually studied the effect of sourdough baking on iron absorption. We are better able to absorb the abundant iron in whole wheat if we bake it up as sourdough bread. The processes outlined in the Iron Rich Foods book and curriculum leverage research findings such as that.
Great grandma ate sourdough bread and she ate fruits and vegetables higher in iron.
As far as I see it, we have no choice but to go rogue, go a bit traditional, and include techniques in our shopping and cooking that help us capture some of what we have lost due to innovations and advancements in food technology.
When our scientific advances in food technology leave us bone-tired and unable to enjoy our lives and families, it is time to do things a bit different.
Great grandmother did another powerful thing: Because she did not have a freezer or ready access to Costco fruits and vegetables year-round, she preserved her own food. If she preserved her food using traditional techniques like pickling, did you realize that she could better absorb the iron in the pickles than in the raw cucumbers she started with?
Fermentation breaks down substances that inhibit our iron absorption. When you ferment food, you are essentially unlocking the iron in that food.
Great grandmother had food higher in iron to start with, she baked those iron-rich grains to unlock their iron, and she pickled her iron-rich cucumbers to unlock their iron.
Why is it, I wonder, that so many of us are ending up on the bad end of an iron ferritin test?
Legions Of Iron Deficient And Anemic People:
Just Add Iron Shavings To Food!
With a decline in iron in our food supply, governments around the globe have responded by adding iron to food. So many people are deficient in iron, they have seen it as the best policy choice simply to fortify food with iron. What they do is add iron to commonly eaten foods like rice or corn.
In the United States, iron is added to boxed cereals, infant formulas, and many other foods.
When I say “iron is added to your cereal,” I mean “iron,” the metal we use for gates, pipes, and more. Iron is iron, be it on a gate or in your cereal.
When broccoli is growing, it takes up tiny particles of the iron which you then eat. Because that broccoli is taking up less and less iron (remember, those iron levels declined by 15%), tiny shavings of iron are added to your cereal so that you can make up for the iron that should have been in your broccoli.
Those tiny little iron shavings will help improve your iron levels a bit but we mix the cereal with milk which inhibits iron absorption and the whole business can make you feel like you are chasing your proverbial tail.
I know I am not alone in reflecting on such a ridiculous approach to health.
Back in 2006, when I put a 10-page e-book on my depression website about iron rich foods, thousands of people coughed up their email address to get that short little e-book because they wanted to create an iron-rich diet that was smart, effective, and research-based.
Websites and e-books and curricula are a whole lot of work, but responding to reader questions over the years and delving into the peer review literature more myself, I put together a more thorough book and curriculum that I offer here on the dailyiron.net website.
I am not a nutritionist or a food scientist. I am just a mom who went crazy and turned to nutrition and food science to find sanity and energy. You may notice that I have a Ph.D. and the Ph.D. is in political science. I actually studied strategic electoral behavior (like why a political party might have an advantage in one county over another or how long a “honeymoon” lasts before voters kick a politician to the curb). Studying political science may be the ultimate study of B.S., which may be in part why I shake my head at boxed cereals with iron. Don’t get me wrong: a politician may help you deal with bureaucrats in a government office, just like the boxed cereal will help you a bit with your iron levels. They do serve a purpose, no doubt, but should we structure our lives to depend on them?
The Science Of Eating In The 21st Century
What if you could absorb 11 times more iron in your whole wheat bread?
It sounds like a gimmick, but I cite a study that shows just that:
An 1160% increase in iron absorption by doing one simple thing.
When I started studying iron rich foods and iron metabolism back in 2006, I was blown away by the amount of peer review scientific literature on what I call “unlocking the iron in your food.”
It is amazing how many scientific experiments are published that conduct a simple experiment such comparing the iron-inhibitors in three breads: a sourdough bread, a bread leavened with baking powder, and an unleavened bread. The researchers carefully control in a laboratory the many factors we cannot control well in our kitchen and they show us which type of bread-making technique is the most effective at reducing iron inhibitors. As I mention above, sourdough bread wins the race.
There is a huge amount of knowledge in the food science literature that we can leverage in our 21st century kitchens.
In contrast, consider the iron fortification programs across the globe. Many nutritionists recommend that as a society that rather than paying attention to how we prepare food, they recommend adding more iron filings in the food we are already eating. The problem with that recommendation is that not everyone needs more iron and too many little iron filings have detrimental health effects on people who are not iron deficient. Worse yet, those iron shavings or the wrong kind of iron supplement can actually be detrimental to certain women in pregnancy.
Iron fortification is great for people who benefit from it and it is a really lousy idea for people who have too much iron or who need a different form of iron. Iron fortification is the proverbial “too much of a good thing.”
Most nutritionists, really, would agree with me but they would point out that people are not willing to make the changes in their shopping or cooking to improve their iron status.
The whole sourdough baking bit seems way too much like “Little House On The Prairie” for a society that eats all of its food from a box anyway. Faced with a society eating out of a box, nutritionists see no other option than to add iron filings to the box.
I do know that some people cook on occasion. I also know that when people discover the energy they get from eating good food, they have new-found energy for cooking.
There is also a really critical point that gets lost in these sorts of discussions: When we think of “Ma Ingalls” from “Little House On The Prairie” and imagine her toiling all day over a wood stove, a point that gets lost is that Ma Ingalls toiled over a heck of a lot of things, from cooking to sweeping her dirt floor to feeding her chickens, all while pregnant.
Ma Ingalls needed cooking short cuts because she was *busy.*
Guess what food science says about those cooking short cuts Ma Ingalls probably used? –> They help you absorb more iron.
Ma Ingalls did not have the luxury of boxed cereal and so she used processes that, unbeknownst to her, helped her absorb more iron.
You can too.
- Ma Ingalls did not have “quick oats” but had to turn out breakfast fast anyway. In this course, learn why you do not need to buy “quick oats” to have quick morning oatmeal. Enjoy whole oats quickly and unlock the iron at the same time.
- Ma Ingalls cooked her beans slowly on her wood stove all day long. You can too or you can use my method that approximates hers, makes cooking beans easy, and unlocks their iron as a bonus.
- Ma Ingalls did not have time to knead bread and she didn’t have to. You do not have to become a baker if you sign up for this class, but if you do want to bake, you do not have to knead. The curriculum is 100% knead-free — who has time to knead?
- Ma Ingalls fermented her garden produce because she had to, lest Laura, Mary, Carrie, and Baby Grace have nothing to eat in the winter. You have a choice and can learn some dead-simple ways to preserve your food and unlock their iron at the same time.
Ma Ingalls did not have as many options as we have today. The Iron Rich Foods book and curriculum takes the research from food science, the best of traditional food preparation, and the shopping opportunities we have in our modern grocery stores to create options for us that far transcend iron filings in a box. You will learn:
- The best vegetarian, iron-rich breakfast you can craft, in three great flavor combinations.
- How to cook beans to unlock their iron without locking out their flavor.
- Whether the fancy “sprouted grain” bread available at health food stores is worth the money.
- How to prepare a breakfast porridge to create a quick and tasty breakfast.
- How to sneak 100% whole grain flour into your recipes, adding extra iron and unlocking it at the same time.
- How to make killer sweat breads like banana, zucchini, pumpkin, and applesauce bread in 100% whole grain, both tasty an iron-rich at the same time.
- How much iron you can unlock by sprouting beans.
- How much your morning coffee impacts your iron absorption.
- How much your evening red wine impacts your iron absorption.
- The one drink your child may be drinking that is wreaking havoc on his or her iron levels.
- How to drink what you want and continue to absorb iron well (because of your knowledge of the food science behind it).
- Why “soaking grains” for breakfast porridge is a great idea.
- Why “soaking grains” for bread making is a hassle and makes soggy bread.
- What one thing many people add to “soaked grain” recipes that actually defeats the purpose (and yet is recommended by Internet gurus).
- The single best way to prepare vegetable juices to skyrocket your iron absorption from them.
- The best appliance you can add to your kitchen should you choose.
- Choose the best flour — flour that is high in iron and flour that lets you unlock its iron.
- Unlock the iron in your breakfast by choosing the best grains and cooking them with our rogue techniques.
- Learn what to add to your breakfast to double your iron absorption. (Learn what to avoid to improve your absorption more.)
- Find vegetables and fruits just ripe enough to help unlock the iron in your grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds.
…
—> You do not need special equipment or supplies.
The techniques in the curriculum are rogue kitchen techniques that cost you nothing and take little time. In many cases you will save time by implementing these techniques if you are already cooking your own food.
- Take the course today. Begin unlocking your iron tonight. It is that simple.
- Learn how you can make sourdough bread and eat it tonight, not in a week.
Scientific Basis
The materials in this curriculum come right out of the peer-reviewed scientific literature in the fields of food science and nutrition. The curriculum creates a user-friendly context for you to understand this literature, for instance at what temperature to soak your beans. (The graph at right is an example of one of 32 graphs in the book to help you understand the science behind it.)
- American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
- Journal of Nutrition
- Journal of Food Science and Technology
- Food Microbiology
- Journal of Clinical Nutrition
- Cereal Chemistry
- Journal of Food Science
- Journal of Food Engineering
- Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
- World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics
- Indian Journal of Nutrition and Dietetics
- Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry
- Journal of the American Dietetic Association
- Food Chemistry
- Pediatric Research
If you have access to these journals, you can do a literature search and discover the techniques for yourself. Alternatively, you can spend a little bit of money on this package and immediately access this research, synthesized in a user-friendly way.
Here’s What You’re Going To Get:
I have split this offering in two pieces, wondering if some people are just into reading and some into videos, but I expect most people will want the package offer below.
The digital book is delivered to you immediately upon purchase and the videos are set up on a password-protected website. You will get access to that site, be able to watch videos at your own leisure, and ask questions if you wish. It is much like a “blog,” but one with private access. (You can take a peek at the site here.)
| Book | Video Course |
$24.97 |
$49.97 |
Special Launch Offer: Buy Both Together
—> $39.97 <—
For the book and the video curriculum.
…
Spring In Your Step
When you do not have enough energy to get out of a chair and walk across the room or to play with your children, it is hard to imagine taking a course at the same time. The fact of the matter is that low iron levels are absolutely fixable and the symptoms of iron deficiency can be reversed in weeks. You need not suffer forever from a lack of energy, from a pale and lifeless complexion, and from funky, curled fingernails. Life really can be a whole lot easier.
This curriculum is for you if:
- Your doctor has told you that you are low in iron and you need to add iron rich foods to your diet.
- You have struggled all your life with low iron.
- Your child is low in iron and you are trying to tackle the problem at its very root.
- You are bone-tired and want to regain your energy by improving the iron content of your diet.
- You are a vegetarian and are seeking to unlock the iron in your plant-based foods.
- You eat meat and want to eat a little more strategically.
- You are gluten-free and want to prepare your gluten-free foods more strategically.
- You do not have a lot of time and you need to make changes slowly.
If you are one of those people who walks down the street with a little SKIP in your step because your abundant levels of energy, you may not need this product. If you are THAT PERSON playing with your children in the park, swinging on the jungle gym, and crawling through the play structures, you may not need this product.
If you are satisfied by all of the iron rich foods lists available on the Internet that SIMPLY give you a list of foods and their iron content, then this course is not for you. This course DIGS DEEP into food science rather than stopping at the simple iron content of food. It explores in detail how to unlock the iron in your food.
Money Back Guarantee
I am confident that you are going to receive great value from the book and the video curriculum, Iron Rich Foods: Unlock The Iron In Your Food and Fight Iron Deficiency. However, if for any reason you feel that this course has not provided you with value, just email me within 10 days of purchase and I will give you a full refund — no questions asked.
I’ll talk to you again soon.
Your Friend,
Amanda Rose, Ph.D.
P.S. Sadly, it is easy to go for years with a mild iron deficiency, not so bad that doctors are hounding you, but bad enough that you cannot live with the vitality, zest, and pizzazz that you deserve. Cooking and eating more strategically is a small price to pay to regain your energy (especially since you’re going to learn to make cooking easier). This curriculum will help you learn to do just that — cook and eat strategically to unlock the iron in your food and build your iron status. I personally guarantee it.
Watch A Free Sample Of The Curriculum
Here’s What Others Wrote About The Program
“Dr. Rose’s easygoing real-life kitchen approach has disarmed my excuse that it’s “too much work”—to the contrary, I learned that soaking my grains makes breakfast faster and less hassle in the morning! Excellent scientific study provides the substance, but a “little of this and a pinch of that” methodology provides the inspiration to adopt these simple food preparation practices into my already-busy life. I’m now providing better nutrition for my family while saving time over the stove top!”
Chaya
Pantry Paratus, Inc.
http://www.pantryparatus.com
| Book | Video Course |
$24.97 |
$49.97 |
Special Launch Offer: Buy Both Together
—> $39.97 <—
For the book and the video curriculum.
…