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8 Healthy Foods That Are High in Iron

Iron is a mineral that serves several important functions, its main one being to carry oxygen throughout your body as a part of red blood cells.

It’s an essential nutrient, meaning you must get it from food. The Daily Value (DV) is 18 mg.

Interestingly, the amount of iron your body absorbs is partly based on how much you have stored.

A deficiency can occur if your intake is too low to replace the amount you lose every day.

Iron deficiency can cause anemia and lead to symptoms like fatigue. Menstruating women who don’t consume iron-rich foods are at a particularly high risk of deficiency.

Luckily, there are plenty of good food choices to help you meet your daily
iron needs.

Here are 8 healthy foods that are high in iron.

1. Shellfish

Shellfish is tasty and nutritious. All shellfish is high in iron, but clams, oysters, and mussels are particularly good sources.

For instance, a 3.5-ounce (100-gram) serving of clams may contain up to 3 mg of iron, which is 17% of the DV.

However, the iron content of clams is highly variable, and some types may contain much lower amounts.

The iron in shellfish is heme iron, which your body absorbs more easily than the non-heme iron found in plants.

A 3.5-ounce serving of clams also provides 26 grams of protein, 24% of the DV for vitamin C, and a whopping 4,125% of the DV for vitamin B12.

In fact, all shellfish is high in nutrients and has been shown to increase the level of heart-healthy HDL cholesterol in your blood.

Although there are legitimate concerns about mercury and toxins in certain types of fish and shellfish, the benefits of consuming seafood far outweigh the risks.

SUMMARY

A 3.5-ounce (100-gram) serving of clams provides 17% of the DV for iron. Shellfish is also rich in many other nutrients and may increase HDL (good) cholesterol levels in your blood.

2. Spinach

Spinach provides many health benefits but very few calories.

About 3.5 ounces (100 grams) of raw spinach contain 2.7 mg of iron, or 15% of the DV (7Trusted Source).

Although this is non-heme iron, which isn’t absorbed very well, spinach is also rich in vitamin C. This is important since vitamin C significantly boosts iron absorption (8Trusted Source).

Spinach is also rich in antioxidants called carotenoids, which may reduce your risk of cancer, decrease inflammation, and protect your eyes from disease (9Trusted Source, 10Trusted Source, 11Trusted Source, 12Trusted Source).

Consuming spinach and other leafy greens with fat helps your body absorb the carotenoids, so make sure to eat a healthy fat like olive oil with your spinach (13Trusted Source).

SUMMARY

Spinach provides 15% of the DV for iron per serving, along with several vitamins and minerals. It also contains important antioxidants.

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Bernadette