The Best Iron Rich Foods You Can Eat

Hi, welcome to Health by Nature. I'm Sheridan, naturopath and nutritionist and I'm going to go through some tips about iron enhancing foods and also things that are a bit misconceptions. So I'm going to clarify those in our video today. So in our last video I talked a little bit about the importance of iron and how many people I see do not actually absorb iron well or they just haven't got iron rich foods in their diet anymore because they've changed to be more plant-based. So I do want to just talk about the density of iron in certain foods because some foods like meat and fish obviously have a bigger iron content. So these would be my preferred sources of iron foods would be organic or grass-fed meat, meatballs, patties. I was vegetarian so you don't have to eat steak but at least some red meat in some form. In Australia kangaroo is a very good source of iron as well and it's very lean so you could look for something like that in the supermarket if you're in Australia. And one something that people often forget is that sardines actually have a fairly decent amount of iron as well and so that's for what you get for every mouthful the density of the iron content is still pretty okay if you just choose to not eat red meat. Then the ones that I often hear people say well I've got a lot of spinach in my diet now so I'm getting enough iron. They think poppy was actually like an accurate representation of iron. Unfortunately it's not and spinach is actually high oxalate food and it's really known to inhibit the mineral absorption of the other foods in the meal. So it's often not my preferred source at all of green leafy vegetables when people want to get iron in their diet. Better sources of green leafy vegetables in your in your for iron foods. Kale this is a purple one you can get obviously dark leafy. I just buy what's in season because I'm buying them direct from the farm or from the farmer at the market and something else that I recommend in clinic often is pumpkin seeds. They're extremely good source of iron magnesium and zinc but when people go and get pumpkin seeds they might be picking up pepitas. Pepitas should be the same but look at the country of origin because if your pepitas are yellow and they're not this like dark rich so the country of origin usually is either China for pepitas and those are quite yellow very poor quality of nutrient source and I wouldn't even spend the money on them. These are Australian pumpkin seeds and you can see the quality is really they're dark and they're really nutrient dense and you can make bliss balls out of these instead of using nuts or something else and yeah really good source of zinc and magnesium as well. Spirulina is something that I'm often hearing people ask me about as a source of iron and it's true. Spirulina is a fairly decent source of iron and B12 but just look at the amount that you need in one teaspoon in order to be able to get those numbers that you need in a day. Now it's around 18 milligrams of iron rich foods in a day for most adults especially if you're a female that is still menstruating and even higher needs if you're pregnant so that's where yeah spirulina could be used. It's a green it's an algae from the sea also high in B12 and what you need to look at is if you're putting a teaspoon of it in blending it with something like hot chocolate or a little chocolate fudge ball or something like that that you could make yourself so that you know exactly how much spirulina is in it. If you've only got like a tiny amount then over 12 balls it may not really count to be a good iron source so if you're going to use this I would use a teaspoon of it every day and putting it into either smoothies bliss balls or something that you know exactly how much you've got. So yeah and just touching on my favorite sauce would be pumpkin seeds and kale or yeah some dark green leafy green veggies they're the best so and they're also high in folate which helps along with vitamin c because vitamin c and folate also enhance absorption of iron. So if you've got any questions and you want some clarification I'm going to make very soon a recipe incorporating some of these foods and thinking how do we put this together in a sensible way that you realistically eat sometimes so stay with me and I will do that in another video and if you're looking for further tips about the importance of iron check out our other video that was made about iron deficiency and the symptoms that can be related to that one commonly forgotten symptom is actually restless leg syndrome which causes sleep problems so sleep problems and then can lead to more fatigue and more fatigue from low iron is just going to set you up in this cycle where yeah it's a constant yeah low energy state and poor sleep combined with it so fixing sleep along with iron deficiency will go hand in hand. Okay thank you again and chat soon bye