A day of dietary iron - for women
At nearly all stages of womanhood us sisters need more iron than our blokes. We’re at risk of iron deficiency at many stages of our lives - as teen girls and young women, starting menstruation and often dabbling with (often ridiculous) dieting, then along comes the pregnancy period where our sweet but parasitic babies in-utero are sucking all the iron out of us, then finally finishing out our pre-menopause years. At each of these periods in our lives (excuse the pun), we’re at risk of iron deficiency or low iron levels, which can really impact on the quality of our lives, sometimes without us even knowing it.
The common signs and symptoms of iron deficiency can often be what we can experience when we’re juggling too many balls in the air, which is often the case with busy mums and women dealing with career, family demands, social lives and too much late night Netflix. Tiredness, headaches, lack of concentration and low energy are all often attributed to busy lives, but in many cases, can be due to low iron status. However if these symptoms persist a quick check up with your GP and blood test may be in order.
So how can we be on top of our iron intake? There is a recommended dietary intake (RDI) of iron that we need to eat each day to keep our iron tanks filled. For teen girls (14-18years) it’s around 15mg a day and for adult wahine, aged 19-50 years, it’s 18mg a day. That’s all good I hear you thinking, but what does this look like.
It’s can be quite challenging to get this amount each day, so the first tip is to get dietary iron from a variety of food sources across the day, rather than try to get it all in one meal, which is often what we end up doing. So we’ve created an example of a one day meal plan to show how to get your iron across a day.
