Enrich your food with iron !

Iron deficiency is very common in India especially among women of child-bearing age. Iron in our body plays an important part in transferring oxygen to all other body parts and its deficiency makes us very lethargic, moody, and tired. Iron requirement for a woman is 30mg, and for a pregnant lady it is 38mg and for a young adolescent boy of 13-15yrs, it increases to 41mg per day!

How do we incorporate so much iron in our everyday lives? Although is it not estimated but observation confirms that the iron consumption of the urban Indian population-especially the youth is decreasing. More than 80% of Indian women are estimated to be suffering from anaemia! 

Enrich your daily diet in such a way that you do not get iron deficiency.

Here’s a list of some iron rich foods (values per 100g):

1.Dried fish- 15-20mg 

2.Liver-6mg

3.Other meats and even egg-although have less amounts of iron content as such-but they are better and easily absorbed in the body and hence considered good sources.

4.Gardencress seeds-100mg (it called halim in hindi, ahliva in marathi, alivirai in tamil and asalio in gujarati). These are the seeds which we normally find in ding ladoos traditionally made for lactating women. It is easy to just gulp down 1 tsp. of gardencress seeds with water-that will give you around 20% of your daily requirement.

5.Niger seeds-56.7mg (kala til in hindi-but not black sesame seeds; they are called ram til in gujarati and karale in hindi whereas katellu in tamil). They are not to be confused with black coloured til seeds which are commonly used in India. You can make chutney by roasting these seeds and then adding some salt, red chilli powder, few curry leaves and haldi. Grind this into a powder. A tablespoon of this chutney will give you another 20% of your daily iron requirement.

6.Cauliflower greens: known as fodder food among the vegetable vendors! These leaves give 40mg of iron along with vitamin C which aids in its absorption. Wash them thoroughly before consumption as they are sprayed with pesticides.

7.Cow peas-chawli beans-20mg.

8.Pohe-20mg.

9.Parsley and dill (shepu)-17-18mg.

10.Mint-16mg.

Colocassia leaves, soybean, roasted channa, moth beans (matki), til, chowli leaves, bajra, buckwheat (kootu),rajgeera, dried coconut, dried dates, rajma also have some amounts of iron. Consumptions of these foods are higher in our daily lives and hence-their contribution to our daily iron requirement is also more. So we have to make sure we include them in our routine diet-especially for women and young men (10-15years) to keep anaemia away.