Q: How to Boost your Iron as a Vegetarian.
Hey Lauren,
As someone who struggles with iron deficiency (and I’m a vegetarian) how does processed wheat interfere with the absorption process? Just curious because I’m a high mileage runner who lives at altitude and iron levels are obviously a big concern!
–Mo from the Mountains
A:
Hey Mo,
You are going to have to watch out for all sorts of iron inhibitors as a vegetarian. Processed wheat is just one of them. When buying wheat products, avoid ones made with lots of baking powder or self-raising flour (the phosphates are inhibitors). Also avoid wheat products that have excess bran thrown in there to boost fiber content. When bran is a part of the whole grain, and its sprouted or processed in the right way, it doesn’t mess with your iron absorption. I recommend “Food for Life” breads, or something similar. I also recommend avoiding any tortilla or food item specifically designed to boost fiber. If you eat fruits and vegetables, you get more than enough.
Another thing to watch out for, as a vegetarian is the effect of soy and legumes. Soy and legumes are high in iron, but the bio-availability is low. You are lucky if you get 1-10% of the iron from them. If you have vitamin C with the soy and legumes, it makes the iron bio-available, so eat broccoli with your soy, and tomatoes with your beans. A bowl of tofu and beans over rice won’t do squat for your iron absorption! This article has some great info for further reading.
If I were a vegetarian, I’d focus on boosting my iron in the morning and evening, and I would plan my breakfast and dinner menus to be as compatible as possible with iron absorption (yes to quinoa, no to tofu, etc.) During lunch is when I’d squeeze in my legumes and soy, paired with vitamin C sources. I’d eat less tofu and more fermented soy products (tempeh, nato, and miso) because fermentation decreases phytates and increases bio-availability of the iron in the same way sprouting wheat does.
Vegetables that help boost iron are broccoli, brussels sprouts, bell peppers, and potatoes. Vegetables that inhibit are dark greens like spinach and chard, and sweet potatoes. I found info on that here. Its funny because I was always told spinach was high in iron, but it turns out the bio-availability is way low. If you eat a spinach salad, add orange slices to it!
Good luck,
-Lauren
popeye was a liar!
Great discussion as always.
A raw vegan athlete/researcher/and all around great guy named Tim Van Orden has some terrific posts on iron and plant-based diets. One can be found here: http://runningraw.com/lectures.html#veganiron and others can be found elsewhere on his site.
Party on good people of the world!
An article in Wikipedia relating how the creator of Popeye took faulty information about iron content in spinach and applied it to his character:
“A frequently circulated story claims that Fleischer’s choice of spinach to give Popeye strength was based on faulty calculations of its iron content. In the story, a scientist misplaced a decimal point in an 1870 measurement of spinach’s iron content, leading to an iron value ten times higher than it should have been. This faulty measurement was not noticed until the 1930s”
Whoa! Its true, then!
Thank you so much Lauren! I have been struggling with this for almost 10 years and it has been hard to find information outside of supplementation! Also the real facts seem to be misconstrued, like the whole spinach thing! This totally makes sense! Obviously a lot of meal planning is going to be involved, but as a vegetarian that’s nothing new! So hopefully here’s to some higher iron levels and better training and races this year:)
Hey just want to post an update: after trying, trying, trying to boost my iron as a vegetarian (supplementing, drinking prune juice, and lastly following Lauren’s great advice above) for over 10 years, with no significant change, I decided to test my last available option: eating red meat. While it was a hard decision to make I knew that my health and desire to run fast were more important than a non-religious dietary choice. I followed your advice in the other post about anemia and 6 weeks later I’m proof it works with iron and blood levels higher than they’ve ever been! Thank you so much for creating an open forum where you help athletes through your experience! I hope whoever reads through all of this gets some answers as well. Being a vegetarian is not a bad thing, but sometimes you have to exercise the power to be flexible and be willing to change your own mind to make improvements!
Mo, did you try iron supplements?
I prefer natural foods, but even running moderate mileage, I’ve always had low hematocrit / hemoglobin and ferritin levels. For a vegetarian like myself, as has been pointed out, one key is to separate your iron intake from your iron-absorbents, which can be difficult to follow with every single meal. (Incidentally, I also eat lots of high-fibre foods and foods with a high polyphenol content, which are healthy, but not conductive to iron absorption).
My solution is to take an iron supplement in the evening, a few hours after the last meal, combined with some vitamin C (which helps absorption). Note that (in Europe), there are different types of readily availabe supplements, solubles that have ~14mg (Fe-II equivalent) per tablet, and over-the-counter ones with 50 or 100mg (equivalent) per tablet. In my case, 50 mg per day lets me keep stable levels in the normal range, without worrying about iron content in the rest of my food.
Of course, you should not take iron supplements without first consulting your doctor, as having too high ferritin can also have negative side effects.
In an ideal world, I would perhaps just get all my nutrients from plants. However, if I have to chose, I prefer iron (and B-12) supplements over eating animals, and all the consequences that entails. But that choice is up to you.
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You get a lot of respect from me for writing these helpful arciltes.