Green vegetables: a meat-free iron source

—by Jill Cadwell

For those of us who prefer hearty granola-crunching to a savory steak or hamburger, it’s sometimes easy to forget about that everimportant mineral: iron. Iron helps the body make proteins, including those that help blood cells carry oxygen, and a lack of iron in a diet can lead to anemia. According to the Food and Nutrition Board at the Institute of Medicine, women over age 50 and adult men should eat 8 mg. of iron per day, women aged 19 to 50 years, 18 mg. per day.

While getting enough iron is usually associated with red meat, we can also glean iron from other meat sources, dried fruits, nuts, legumes, whole grains, molasses, and especially green vegetables.

For the most concentrated iron content in greens, turn to spinach, which will provide about 25% of your daily iron in two cups. One bunch (fist full) of cilantro will provide about 10%. One and onefourth cups of kale or two cups of Swiss chard will provide 8%, and one medium stalk of broccoli will provide 6%. You can also get 6% of your day’s iron from arugula, but you’ll need four cups of it. One small serving of artichokes, romaine lettuce, green beans, green cabbage, and asparagus will give you about 2% each.

But the hard part isn’t knowing what’s good for us, it’s consuming it in enough quantity. It’s easy to tuck a few broccoli florets into an omelette, or fortify lasagna with spinach. How about making the greens the main course? Give the two recipes (referenced at the top of this article) a try.

Of course, thousands of great recipes for these iron-rich green veggies exist, everything from “Dhania (cilantro) Chutney” to “Lentil Swiss Chard Soup” to “Sweet and Savory Kale.”

Whichever recipe you prefer, just remember that those wonderful green vegetables are a good meat-free source of iron and taste!

Online Resources

• Romaine "Lettuce: Nutrition . Selection . Storage"
• "Iron in Diet"
• Top 10 Iron-Rich Foods
• Foods rich in Iron
• Nutrient density of green vegetables
• Romaine lettuce
• Nutrition Data: Coriander (cilantro) leaves, raw [Chinese parsley, raw, Cilantro, raw]

[JillCadwell is a teacher of composition and a freelance writer; she enjoys writing about food for HPC's newsletter.]