Musings

Foods high in iron and google

By Sam Mooney ⋅ February 6, 2009 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Mostly I love google but sometimes the results are bizarre.

My daughter had to have a C-section and lost a lot of blood during the surgery. She’s now anemic and struggling to breastfeed.She’s taking Iron supplements but I figure an iron rich diet can’t hurt.  I decided to google ‘iron in food’. 

I admit this is not a great search term.  It was 6.30 am and I’ve spent 5 to 10 hours a day for the past 5 days at the hospital – I hate hospitals but that’s a different post – and haven’t been sleeping very well.  Those are my excuses.

In number one spot in the results was a list of food highest in iron (per 200 calories).  There are 116 items on the list.  Number one is dried parsley.  It has 70 mg of iron per 200 calories.  Great.  Totally useless information.  I can’t even imagine what volume of dried parsley contains 200 calories.

Number 2 on the list – Raw air-dried Alaskan Beluga whale meat which has 61.4 mg of iron per 200 calories.  At least you wouldn’t have to eat the same volume of the dried raw whale meat as you would dried parsley.

In positions 3 and 4 we have dried spearmint and dried marjoram.  Position 9 is freeze-dried parsley at 39.8 mg.  Hmmm…I guess we’re going to be going with the dried as opposed to freeze-dried parsley.

I haven’t figured out how the list is ordered.  At 34 there is Goose, liver, raw with 45.9 mg.  It’s preceded by Cereals, fortified, puffed wheat with 17.4 mg and followed by Duck, domestic, liver, raw with 44.9 mg.

Unfortunately it doesn’t specify whether the goose is domestic or wild.  I think we’ll stick with the domestic duck, much easier to find.  Maybe if I cut the liver into tiny wee pieces and freeze them Meg could take them like pills.  Somehow I just can’t see her biting in to a piece of raw duck liver.

Or maybe I could blend it with ice cream and bananas and make a banana liver shake.

Or I could just find another list.