Iron is an essential mineral for health. As Càstor Bayo, a nutritionist and graduate in food science and technology, explained in RAC1.cat, iron “makes blood circulate at an adequate rate, favors proper breathing by facilitating the transport of oxygen to tissues and stimulates immunity and physical resistance. It is essential for the formation of muscle proteins, red blood cells and bones”.
Lack of iron can have different causes. We may not assimilate it well, that we do not ingest enough with food or that we lose iron due to heavy bleeding, as happens to many women with menstruation. Anemia affects 25% of people in the world, and iron deficiency is the most common cause.
Some foods are especially rich in iron and can help us to have good reserves of this mineral. The iron that is best absorbed is heme iron, and among the foods with the most iron of this type are clams and cockles (about 24 milligrams of iron per 100 grams of product), mussels (about 4.5 milligrams of iron per 100 grams) or liver (up to 18 milligrams of iron per 100 grams).
Álvaro Vargas, journalist and senior dietetician, gives a lot of advice on nutrition, veganism and plant-based recipes, on social networks. One of his recent posts explains a practical trick to make salads richer in iron: use a green leaf that has twice as much iron as the most common ones.
“In general, lettuce has more or less one milligram of iron per 100 grams. It seems little, but it is a normal amount, this is already a good amount of iron. But there is a type that doubles that amount: it has two milligrams of iron for every 100 grams of food, a magnificent amount: they are the lamb's lettuce. Technically, they would not be a lettuce, but in terms of nutrition, we do include them in this group”, explains Vargas.
In addition, the lamb's lettuce is also interesting for its content of vitamin A, and vitamin C, calcium, magnesium, potassium or phosphorus.
Lamb's lettuce is normally used raw with salad, and added at the end, just before serving the dish, or even after dressing it. The heat and some strong seasonings such as vinegar, or even the oil itself, quickly deteriorate it, making its color darker and the texture of the leaves spoiling.
This article was originally published on RAC1.
