What’s the Deal With Iron?

Summary: The long awaited next installment in our What's The Deal series is finally here. Iron is a nutrient of significant debate in the general public, especially among athletes and people eating plant-based diets. Besides protein, iron may be the first thing thought to be a major deficiency among vegans and vegetarians. But what does the science say? Surprisingly, there is fairly little debate among the scientific community regarding this nutrient. It's not that controversial. It's definitely not poorly studied. In fact, a lot has been learned and applied regarding this mineral. However, iron deficiency is the number one nutrient deficiency in the world, so this is a very important dietary component. So, we decided to tackle the research and look into how iron actually works and if it is of major concern if you eat a plant based diet.<br> <br> After defining and characterizing iron, we discuss and address a few common claims, such as:<br> <br> You can't get enough iron on a plant-based diet, especially as an athlete<br> Plant sources of iron are of lower quality than animal sources and are not absorbed as well<br> Oxalates found in plant foods inhibit the absorption of iron<br> We then looked at our own individual diets in a day to see how we stack up in terms of iron intake, and then talk about ways to get in iron rich foods from plants and how to absorb iron more effectively. It's a pretty science-rich episode that remains pretty short, so we hope you got some useful information out of it and boosted your confidence about talking about iron.