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The Truth About Iron In Food

Are you struggling with an iron deficiency and wonder how you can improve your diet?

Are you tired of being tired all of the time? If your child is struggling are you concerned for his or her health and proper development?

Your doctor may have prescribed an iron supplement and it may work well for you but your best long-term plan for optimum health is to improve your diet to help you absorb more iron.


Why Is Iron Deficiency So Common?
The Basic Reason

Iron deficiency is extremely common and yet iron is ubiquitous in our environment. Iron is part of the earth’s core and, yet, we cannot always get enough into the cells of our bodies.

It turns out that absorbing iron can be complicated. Certain foods and minerals block your absorption of iron and keep you body from incorporating that iron into the cells where it is needed.

Resources here on our website help you understand how you can prepare food and combine food to absorb more iron.


Why Is Iron Deficiency So Common?
(You Have Probably *Never* Heard This Reason)

Do you realize that garden product (basic fruits and vegetables that we buy at the market) has 15% less iron now than it did in the 1940s?

The iron content of vegetables has declined in the last 80 years by 15%.

I was nearly blown out of my chair when I discovered this data at a food science library. I was reading a 2005 study in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin.

Those researchers discovered that small fruits and vegetable crops like broccoli, carrots, and mustard greens have 15% less iron today than they did 80 years ago.

When grandma cooked up her broccoli, collard greens, or eggplant, she fed her family food higher in iron than you eat today, even if you cook collard greens in your own kitchen like grandma used to do.


Food Manufacturers Also Remove Iron From Our Food And Replace It With Iron Shavings


We all love white flour products. Baked goods made from white flour are light, fluffy, and oh-so-tasty, but it is the “brown part” of the grain that has the iron.

White flour is easier to bake with and we love to eat it, so bread manufacturers make bread with white flour. They remove the iron portion of the grain and then use the rest to make your bread. Go into a grocery store right now, look at the label on the bread, and find that the first ingredient is not “whole wheat” (or any “whole” grain for that matter). The main ingredient of most breads is white flour, even if the bread looks brown.

The iron in the grain gets removed from the flour before the bread is even baked.

The last thing bread factories need is a bunch of pale, exhausted iron-deficient people complaining about their bad health, so bread factories then sprinkle or spray some iron into the bread.


With Less Iron In Broccoli And Bread,
Food Factories Sprinkle Iron Shavings In Your White Bread

Our government officials are deeply concerned that we do not get enough iron in our foods. The government knows that you can end up with heart problems and babies with birth defects from iron deficiency.

All over the world, governments are adding iron to foods.

In the United States, iron is added to bread, boxed cereals, infant formulas, and many other foods.

When I say “iron is added to your food,” 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 in tiny particles of the iron through its roots. You eat that iron when you eat the broccoli. But, remember, that broccoli is taking in 15% less iron than it did in 1940. To make up for the iron that should have been in your broccoli, tiny shavings of iron are added to your breads and cereals.

Adding iron to your food seems like a really smart idea until you look at the whole picture.

You may have eaten a popular white bread called “Wonder Bread,” a brand on the decline with more consumer interest in whole grain breads. In 2010, Wonder Bread introduced a new high-fiber and fortified bread so that we could all enjoy the airy (and somewhat pasty) white bread of the 1970s. They stuffed it with fiber from soy and and they added ferrous sulfate to it so that consumers could get their iron.

I am not really surprised that they didn’t actually include more whole wheat or rice flour in the bread itself because that ferrous sulfate would turn the whole loaf rancid if left too long on a shelf.

Ultimately the sad fact is that actual whole grain bread is better for your iron absorption than fortified white bread. I can appreciate that Wonder Bread is out to sell more bread but it’s not your top-pick as an iron-rich food even though the label shows a lot of iron. Actual food, such as whole wheat, is a better bet. Prepare it as we recommend in the book for best results.


Why Do Governments Add Iron Pieces To Your Food?

Governments add iron pieces to your food, but they do not have to. Governments could give you an Iron Rich Foods book so that you could pull yourself up by your bootstraps and improve your own health.

But governments add iron pieces to your food because they do not believe that you can improve your own situation. You need help and you need that help in a box because it is the only way it sees to help you out.

I happen to know that many people like you are looking for more than boxed food with iron pieces.

In 2006 I placed an iron rich foods report on my popular depression website. Thousands of people read the report and made positive changes in their shopping and even in their cooking to improve their iron levels. Their interest inspired the entire dailyiron.net website which is now the highest trafficked website on the Internet devoted to the topic of iron in food.

When you are reading the Iron Rich Foods book, you will see how easy many of the changes are. Many of the changes are “tweaks.”


Are You A “Bootstrapper”?

We can wait for iron fortification that is smarter, using better-absorbed iron in foods that won’t turn green or gray and go rancid from the iron.

Or can we?

Should we?

Should we wait for government solutions to our dietary problems? Will those solutions really be the best for our individual circumstances? They may be good solutions for some people.

However, many people do feel the need to take control of their own future and to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

The most diligent bootstrappers among us will become educated about the food they are eating and tailor a diet to their circumstances. If that is you, the extensive collection of information on this website will help you. Search our databases while you wait for our apps. Take our FREE short course on iron. Get early access to the book to help navigate you through the fairly complex information from the food science literature.