Adding Iron into Your Daily Diet Plan

It is not really too difficult to get the proper amounts of iron in your diet if you know which foods are best. In this article, I am going to point out which foods are best sources of iron.

One of the best foods that are a good iron source, is raisins. One cup of raisins, contains around 5 milligrams of iron. Raisins are also rich in potassium an electrolyte needed to control our fluids and regulation of our cardiovascular system.

Spinach is a great vegetable source in many ways. In a one cup serving, you get around 6 milligrams of iron. Spinach is also filled with Vitamin C, and is a wonderful potassium source. You can eat spinach in your salads, or just plain steamed.

Your legumes are another source of not only iron, but in other nutrients such as manganese. Manganese, a trace mineral, is needed in the diet for body energy production along with counteracting free radicals, which are the disease causing toxins in our bodies. Your legume sources are those foods such as black beans, lima beans, kidney beans, navy and soy beans, and also lentils. Including some of these foods in one cup servings daily, will bring you more of the iron that your body needs.

Cereals such as oatmeal, and whole wheat/bran cereals are great for providing you with needed iron daily along with the fiber for roughage in your diet. Try eating rolled oats, which contain almost 7 grams of iron. Oatmeal is also great for magnesium which helps the bones, and several other nutrients. Another important ingredient rich in oats is fatty acids, which number over 3,780 mg per serving.

Other dried fruits rich in iron are dried peaches and also dried apricots. One cup of dried apricots contain 7.2 mg or thereabouts of iron, and the peaches have 9.6 mg per serving of iron. These dried fruits are also rich in your vitamin A.

Choosing whole wheat pastas, enriched rice, and whole wheat breads over other grains is best if you not only want your better iron sources, but other key nutrients. All of these foods in whole wheat, contain excellent fiber sources along with manganese, which helps the body to porcess those key nutrients such as biotin, and essential fatty acids. Most of these whole wheat sources will provide you with 10 percent or better of your daily needed allowance for iron.

So to sum it all up here, choosing these foods as part of your diet, will help your iron-deficiency anemia, or prevent it very nicely. They will also serve your health in other areas as well.