How To Prevent Iron Deficiency Or Anemia With A Healthy Vegan Diet

Preventing iron deficiency or anemia for the vegan is simpler than you think. Adjusting your diet to make it iron rich, or more specifically iron adequate is all that is needed.

Beginning with babies, breast milk is actually high in iron.  Babies absorb about 50mg iron from breast milk.

For adult women and teenagers, the requirement is less than 18mg a day.  During pregnancy however, a larger volume of blood is required to support the fetus so the risk of iron deficiency is higher during this time as well. Medically speaking, women require about 30-60mg of iron during pregnancy. Post menopause, women need about 8-10mg of iron a day.

Female athletes and endurance athletes are a very high risk group due to their excessive use of their red blood cells.  Loss of iron through sweat is commonly observed in their case.  Inadequate dietary iron with extensive training places a lot of stress on the body as the body has a hard time responding to these demands.

To fulfill the demands of the body in such cases iron enriched cereals, pastas, bread, legumes such as peas, baked beans and leafy vegetables such as spinach and coriander leaves, dried fruits, raisins, apricots, canned asparagus, baked potato, lentils and molasses are all good choices.  Red fruits such as watermelon and raspberries are excellent sources of iron.  Though rich, vegetables and fruits are a source of non heme iron.

Intake of iron has to be effective and to have the desired effect iron helpers have to be included in the diet. Vegetables have non heme iron which is difficult to absorb. Compared to 15 absorption rate in non vegetarian food items, it is only 5 in vegetarian ones. Vitamin C rich fruits (iron helpers) perfectly suit the purpose. Thus, intake of iron rich food simultaneously with a glass of lemon juice or orange juice only enhances the iron absorption. Other iron absorption enhancers are broccoli, tomato juice and sprouts and strawberries.

Red wine, calcium, caffeine, and tannins on the other hand are inhibitors.

In elderly people, anemia is usually prone to complications. The diet is the same for them but has to be monitored carefully. Under no condition, however, should the dietary iron be more than 50mg without medical supervision.

Symptoms of anemia include: Breathlessness, cardiac complications, fatigue and reduced physical and mental performance are just a few of its numerous effects. It goes without saying that prevention is the best solution.  Vegan and women especially can benefit from taking a liquid iron supplement to prevent anemia.

We recommend Florafix liquid iron and herbs as a supplement. A liquid supplement, no matter what it is, is the easiest and the best way for the body to absorb rather than pills.

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