Iron is vital as it’s main job is to carry oxygen around the body. About 70% of your body’s iron goes into the haemoglobin in your red blood cells, which carries life-giving oxygen around your body so that your tissues and muscles have sufficient oxygen. Not getting enough iron basically means that your body can’t create enough of these healthy red-blood cells, which causes you to often feel exhausted and fatigued. This exhaustion can then affect everything from your brain function to your immune system’s ability to fight off infection, so getting enough iron is really key.

There are two types of iron: heme iron, which is readily absorbed into the body and is found in meat and fish, and non-heme iron, which is not so readily absorbed into our bodies – this type is found both in animal tissue and in vegetables and grains. If you’re a plant based eater then it’s really important to be conscious of your iron intake as the type of iron we eat isn’t as easy to absorb and we need to make sure that we have enough to prevent any kind of deficiency! Don’t worry though, the great news is that there are plenty of amazing plant-based foods that are really high in iron and these sources are all delicious. Plus vitamin C helps to promote the absorption of non-heme iron, and plant-based iron sources are often super high in vitamin C as well – so it’s a double win really!

So much do we actually need? Women need about 18mg of iron a day, which is huge in comparison to men who only need about 8mg.

Which foods should we focus on? Spirulina is the one of the superheroes of iron and it’s a great superfood to invest in as just a teaspoon of spirulina in your morning smoothie will give you about 5mg of iron, which is awesome. I love adding a spoonful of it to a green or berry smoothie as a boost first thing in the morning. Although it does have a strong, distinctive taste so I’d advise starting with just a quarter of a teaspoon of it and then building up slowly so you get used to the taste! Alternatively if you really hate the taste you can take spirulina tablets, so you can get your spirulina boost without having to change the taste of your breakfast! I take these when I travel too, which is great for keeping energy levels high. I use tablets byOrganic Burst, which I love as they’re 100% spirulina with no plastic coating – although it does mean you have to swallow them quickly as they don’t taste too delicious when they start to dissolve on your tongue, so have your water ready when you put them in your mouth!

Spirulina isn’t the only source of iron though, don’t worry! There are lots of delicious foods that are also fantastic iron sources – yummy grains like quinoa and oats, pulses like lentils, seeds like pumpkin and sesame, nuts like cashew, almond or pine nuts and greens like spinach and chard, are all really high in iron – Popeye would be in heaven!

To give you some rough idea of how much iron a portion of these gives you I’ve shared a few stats below, which may be helpful for visualising what you need to eat:

• ½ a cup of chickpeas contains about 6mg of iron (a great excuse to eat mountains of hummus!)
• a teaspoon of spirulina contains about 5mg of iron
• ½ a cup of black beans contains about 5mg of iron
• ½ a cup of quinoa contains about 4mg of iron
• ½ a cup of oats contains about 4mg of iron
• ½ a cup of lentils contains about 3.5mg of iron
• A handful of cashews contains 3mg of iron
• A tablespoon of raw cacao contains about 3mg of iron (raw brownies anyone?!)
• 1 cup of spinach contains about 1mg of iron
• A handful of pumpkin seeds contains about 1mg of iron

So what does getting enough iron in your everyday meals look like in a day? These are just a few examples of ways you can enjoy getting all the iron goodness you need!

Breakfast: A smoothie made of a big handful of spinach, a banana, a tablespoon of chia seeds (with vit C to help absorb the iron!), a teaspoon of spirulina and almond milk, this would give you about 8mg of iron, which is almost half your required daily intake.

Or you could have 2 slices of my Superseed bread topped with mashed avocado, which would add up to about 7mg of iron.

Lunch: a big salad or bowl of soup topped with either sautéed black beans or roasted chickpeas with a handful of crunchy pumpkin seeds would give you 4 to 5mg or iron.

Or a scrummy pile of quinoa topped with hummus and your favourite roasted veggies would give you about 7mg of iron.

Dinner: if you made a lentil and quinoa dish with wilted spinach and cashews that would be about 9mg of iron, so you’d be way over your daily required intake, which is awesome!

Plus you can also be snacking on iron-rich foods like sweet medjool dates with nut butter or salty olives.

So you can see there are plenty of ways and delicious combinations to be found to make sure you’re getting plenty of iron and I hope this gives you lots of ideas for iron-ing up your mealtimes and bodies!