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.
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