Even Vegetarians Can Have a Stomach Made of Iron
At the knitting class that I teach, the topic of dietary iron intake came 
up - clearly my students are advanced if we are already progressing to the part of “bitch” in our weekly lessons of stitchery. One newbie knitter is a vegetarian (a second one is too, but she eats chicken … yea) and was recently diagnosed by her doctor as being anemic. Thus, she thought to ask me where I get my iron. Since I wasn’t at once immediately able to rattle off enough sources to feel that I had satisfactorily answered her question, I promised a post once I further researched the matter. So, Miss Krissy, this one’s for you.
Anemia is when the iron levels in your blood system are low which causes your blood to have difficulty moving oxygen. It tends to be associated with vegetarianism because the most absorbable sources of dietary iron are red meats and fish. However, I was anemic when I was a meat-eater, and now am not.
Iron intake is important because our bodies simply use it as it comes - we can’t get rid of excess or store it for later (this is also why you can get sick from too much iron). Thus, our body keeps tight regulations on how much is taken in from what we eat.
Signs and symptoms of anemia include pale skin, weak nails, fatigue, weakness … gee, is this where people get all of their stereotypes about vegetarians?
But never fear! Aside from the 
animal-based or supplement-form (which should be kept far out of children’s reach as ingesting it is a leading cause of toxic death among kids!), here is how our bodies can get the iron that we need:
lentils
beans, seeds, nuts, chickpeas
leafy vegetables
tofu, soy products, tempeh
olives
black-eyed peas
potatoes with skin
whole-grain/wheat bread
tomato
seaweed
parsley, garlic
leeks
dried figs, raisins
mushrooms
rice
If you have a question that you would rather have me spend the time researching for you, and don’t attend my knitting class, e-mail it to me at livingwithoutmeat at gmail dot com! I love to help!
October 1st, 2007 at 9:38 am
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October 8th, 2007 at 12:13 am
[...] is Living Without Meat - and recently talked about iron deficiency. She states “I was anemic when I was a [...]
December 10th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
nice post, It is a bookmark worth^^