Tips for anemia?

[Sunny]

How does a vegetarian raise the iron levels without red meat? Our daughter couldn't give blood yesterday as her iron levels too low.... she's a raw foods vegan and has given blood for the past 10 years, and often been low in iron, but with the raw diet, it was still down .... any tips? She is helping her Dh do the 6WC ( he eats meat) ..... Thanx

[maxlharris]

Delurk:
Rare problem among protein powered people, but:
take a multivitamin with iron. Somewhat easier to find than one without.
Relurk

[mcsblues]

You could always tell her to come to her senses and stop being a raw food vegan ...

... I'm sure that wouldn't start an argument!

[S Bear]

I've been a lacto-ovo vegetarian for about 40 years, and I've never had that problem. Much the opposite, in fact.

A good multimineral supplement will probably do the trick, but many of them have their iron in a form that is poorly available (usually just iron sulfate).

If you go to a decent health food store, they will have chelated iron (iron bound to an amino acid). These are 10-20 times better absorbed by the body than iron sulfate and it's relatives. A nice thing about this is that you can add just iron in the amounts needed, instead of a wide-spectrum supplement, which might not be needed.

As maxlharris says, the usual problem is finding a mulitmineral supplement WITHOUT iron. I've only been able to find two, and those are the ones I take.

[S Bear]

PS. If she's really a raw-food vegan, she should also start watching her iodine levels. I love broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and their pals, but in their raw form they (and soy) are goiterogens--the lock up iodine and dump it from the body. Not a good thing in large quantities.

Cooking is universal in human societies for some very good reasons other than just palatability.