33 Iron-Rich Foods to Add to Your Diet

It’s important for anyone with a chronic illness to eat a balanced diet, but children and adults with hemophilia should also include iron-rich foods as some of the body’s store of iron is lost during bleeding.

MORE: How diet can help with hemophilia management.

There are two different types of iron that your body can get from food: heme and nonheme. Heme is found in animal products and nonheme is found in plant products. Our bodies tend to get more iron from heme foods, but if you’re a vegetarian, you can still eat plenty of iron-rich foods. Nonheme iron is the type added to foods like breakfast cereals.

With help from everydayhealth.com, the Mayo Clinic, and webmd.com, we’ve put together a list of heme and nonheme iron-rich foods which should form part of your regular diet.

Heme Iron Foods

• Liver
• Oysters, clams and mussels
• Red meats such as beef and lamb
• Canned sardines
• Chicken and turkey
• Pork and ham
• Veal
• Fish

Nonheme Iron Foods

• Iron-fortified breakfast cereals, rice, breads and pastas
• Cooked beans and lentils
• Tofu
• Pumpkins, squash or sesame seeds
• Chickpeas, kidney beans and lima beans
• Dried apricots
• Baked potatoes
• Nuts
• Broccoli stems
• Raw and cooked spinach and kale
• Peas

To help extract the most amount of iron out of a food, it’s advisable to eat it along with something high in vitamin C such as:

• Oranges
• Lemons
• Broccoli
• Leafy greens
• Melon
• Kiwi
• Peppers
• Strawberries
• Tomatoes

MORE: 13 fast facts about hemophilia.

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