Iron Rich Food Combs

If you've been considering cutting out or cutting back on red meat, you may be wondering if you'll wind up depriving your body of iron. Sure, plant-based foods also contain this mineral, but it isn't as readily absorbed. Only 2% to 20% of the iron in plants (called non-heme) makes its way from your digestive system to your blood, compared to 15% to 35% of the iron in animal foods (called heme). But fortunately, there's a simple solution: Just add some vitamin C to your meal. It boosts the amount of non-heme iron your body absorbs by as much as six fold. Below are six iron-rich plant foods, each paired with a fruit or veggie loaded with vitamin C. But there's no need to stick with these specific pairs—feel free to mix and match. You can create tons of combos with these 12 staples, to help your body get all the iron it needs.
Spinach (iron) + red bell peppers (C)

There are plenty of ways to pair these two. Raw, minced peppers in a spinach salad works, as does spinach cooked into a stuffed bell pepper. Or try sliced peppers sautéed with spinach. I love this combo with olive oil, garlic, and crushed red pepper.
Broccoli (iron) + tomatoes (C)

Toss steamed broccoli florets in sundried tomato pesto. Or to put together dinner in minutes, sauté broccoli and tomatoes with onions, mushrooms, olive oil, garlic, and Italian herb seasoning. Complete the meal with a lean protein (like chicken breast, salmon, or white beans) and a small serving of a healthy carb (such as quinoa or brown rice pasta). To get an iron boost at breakfast, add broccoli and tomatoes to an omelet or frittata.
Black beans (iron) + cabbage (C)

One of my favorite ways to combine these two is in black bean tacos, each topped with a generous portion of vinegar-based slaw. Black bean-stuffed cabbage rolls are another great option. Or simply add whole, chilled black beans to a slaw.
Kale (iron) + oranges (C)

You can whip both of these into a smoothie, add orange wedges to a kale salad, include them in a stir fry, or enjoy an orange with some crunchy kale chips for a nourishing snack.
Lentils (iron) with Brussels sprouts (C)

Serve grilled or oven-roasted Brussels sprouts over a bed of seasoned lentils, or add both to a fresh garden salad. Shaved Brussels sprouts and lentils also make a great filling for lettuce cups!
Dark chocolate (iron) with strawberries (C)

If you didn’t know that dark chocolate is a good source of iron, I’m thrilled to deliver the good news. Melt and drizzle it over whole strawberries. Or add chopped dark chocolate and sliced strawberries to your morning oatmeal, whip them together in a smoothie, or fold them into protein-packed Greek yogurt. For a fun and healthy dessert, try frozen pops—pour almond milk, chopped dark chocolate, and minced strawberries into molds, along with seasonings like fresh grated ginger, chopped mint, or ground cinnamon.
Bonus tricks

Cook with iron: Using iron cookware transfers some of the iron into your food, boosting your intake. This works especially well with acidic foods that have a higher moisture content, like tomato sauce. One classic study found that the iron content in spaghetti sauce increased nine fold after being cooked in a cast iron pot.

Avoid foods that interfere with iron uptake: Tannins (found in tea and coffee) and calcium both interfere with absorption. So if you’re trying to build your body’s iron stores, try to avoid drinking tea and coffee, and taking calcium supplements before an iron-rich meal.

Manufactures really mean about their natural food

Like many shoppers, I find food labels oddly confusing. You can have words such as “artificial” and natural” in most circumstances, and the implications are pretty clear.
But once the words hit food labels, the meaning starts to get blurry. With the prevalence of food flavoring in our diets today, I often wonder what it means to consume natural versus artificial flavors. Is one type of flavoring necessarily better for you when you’re not eating the actual food anyways? While “artificial” generally sounds fake and bad, there are artificially-flavored products that taste more “real” than their naturally-flavored counterparts. In the world of food flavoring, what do manufacturers really mean by natural and artificial flavors?

But before you peg artificial food flavoring as worse than natural flavors, Emma Boast, Program Director of the Museum of Food and Drink who is currently preparing for the exhibition “Flavor: Making It and Faking It,” offered a different perspective. She noted, “Natural and artificial flavors can be made from exactly the same chemicals that come from edible and inedible sources.” For example, you can have a “natural” lemon flavor made from citral, which is a chemical found in lemon peel. You can also have an “artificial” lemon flavor made from citral, which is processed from petrochemicals. The only difference between these two chemicals is how they were synthesized. Your sensory experience of each will be exactly the same, because they are the same chemical. The most important thing to note, according to Boast, is that “natural” citral does not need to come from lemons; it can come from plants like lemongrass and lemon myrtle, which also contain citral. In short, the word “natural” does not necessarily mean a product is better for you, or more sustainable.

As for health implications, Boast noted, “we don’t have any evidence distinguishing the nutritional benefits of natural and artificial food flavoring at this point.” Although odds are much higher of finding artificial food flavoring in potato chips than in broccoli for instance, the sugar and starch-rich component of the snack can be more easily considered as the culprit of the negative dietary effect before the artificiality of the flavoring comes into play, according to Boast.