Dietary Iron

1. Dietary Iron

FS: .. someone wrote in asking about getting enough iron, especially for women. What would you suggest to a cross-country skier who recently became a vegetarian, in terms of foods and supplements?

AK: That’s a good question. That’s one of the things we do screen our athletes for. We do complete iron profiles, checking their iron, hemoglobin, and serum iron stores. That is a huge deal, and it’s something we try to take a proactive approach on. It’s absolutely essential, knowing iron functions as the primary carrier of oxygen in the body.

Is it possible for vegetarians to get adequate iron? It is—it’s just a lot more difficult. Animal sources of iron are heme sources, which are much better absorbed than the vegetable counterparts, which are non-heme. Non-heme is a less efficiently absorbed form of iron.

When someone is a vegetarian and looking to have more iron-rich food in their diet, one thing they need to focus on is every time they’re having one of those non-heme sources of iron, they need to couple it with a vitamin C source. Quinoa is a source of iron: have that with tomatoes, or some lemon squeezed in there to help with the absorption. Pumpkin seeds are one of the richest non-meat sources of iron: You add a quarter cup of pumpkin seeds to your oatmeal in the morning—having that with four ounces of orange juice is going to give you plenty of vitamin C.

There definitely are ways to get iron from non-meat sources—it just becomes much more difficult, because they’re not as well absorbed. Tofu can be a good source, but four ounces of tofu to give you six milligrams of iron is nowhere the same amount you’d get from shellfish. If they are really concerned about it, in a deficient state, that’s when you’d want to look towards supplementing your iron.

[from Fasterskier.com]

richard