How much iron per day?

[chris]

I have been looking at alternatives to orange juice for my sugar source to reduce the amount of liquid I am taking in. Raisins and currants are quite cheap and provide a lot of sugar and calories however they contain a fair bit of iron, up to 3+mg per 100 grams. I would plan on eating a few hundreds grams per day maybe.

I am aware of methods of binding iron - calcium, coffee, milk etc.. I am wondering how much iron we can consume per day and not bring on negatives as AFAIK the methods of reducing the iron do not reduce 100%.

Thanks.

 

[Primal2Peat]

I'm not sure about the maximum iron amounts, but have you thought about using honey as your alternative sugar source? I love eating raw honey with my raw milk.

I can't take a lot of orange juice, but I sip it through out the day as much as I can.

 

[jyb]

Aren't raisins loaded with pesticides?

 

[Filip1993]

Iron intake

[moderator edit: topics merged]

I've been thinking about iron a lot the last couple of weeks. It's pretty clear that iron is bad in excess, I even remember reading about it during my paleo period, I think Chris Kresser wrote about it. Anyway, my question is how much iron is too much? Is it safe to eat a serving of red meat every day for example? And how does the body get rid of excess iron? Is donating blood the only way to get it out of the body?

Cheers

 

[Mittir]

Re: Iron intake

RP has mentioned that high diabetes rate in adult American is due to red meat diet.
Red meat is high in heme iron and it's absorption rate is very high and coffee can not
inhibit this absorption. Body daily spends a small amount of iron, it is about 1 mg.
You can use cronometer to track your iron intake. Heme iron has about 30 percent
absorption rate and non-heme iron rate is close to 2-3 percent.
Acidic food increases non-heme iron absorption and coffee/ tea inhibits it.
I think if you plan to eat red meat everyday then donating blood is the best option.