Читать книгу Why Men Don’t Iron: The New Reality of Gender Differences - Anne Moir - Страница 13

The body needs a host of micronutrients to function properly. Iron, for instance, is intimately related to the manufacture of blood: deny your body its fix of iron and haemoglobin levels drop, leading to lethargy. It was briefly thought that too much iron in the diet could lead to coronary heart disease,²⁹ but a study of more than 12,000 men and women found no relationship between iron stores in the body and death by heart disease in men. The results for women were more ambiguous.³⁰

Research is showing that we have too few micronutrients – zinc and iron in particular – in our officially recommended diets, and a serious lack of either harms the body’s immune system. Low intake of iron, especially for infants, can lead to irreversible brain damage. A weaning infant has no iron stores and must rely entirely on dietary iron. ‘It is possible to meet these high requirements,’ reads a leading textbook on nutrition, ‘if the diet consistently has a high content of meat and ascorbic-acid [Vitamin C] rich foods.’³¹ Vitamin C, just like red meat, is an anti-phytic agent. Phytic acid (phytates are found in brown flour: more of that later) impairs the absorption of some nutrients, including iron. Anti-phytic agents oppose the effect of phytic acid and so improve absorption of trace minerals. Too little iron in an adult can mean impaired memory and learning ability, though the effects are reversible.³²

Tests on male vegetarians in New Zealand showed them to have little more than a third (35%) of the iron in their blood compared with the majority of the male population. Yet the vegetarians had a significantly higher iron intake. They were eating more iron, but absorbing less, and the researchers concluded: ‘Recommended intakes of iron may need to be higher for vegetarians, particularly men.’³³

‘Popeye would have been able to absorb less than 2 per cent of the iron in his spinach,’ Bill notes, ‘whereas Dracula would have absorbed 20 per cent of the iron in his high protein snacks.’³⁴

‘Not quite,’ said Anne. ‘For some unknown reason, iron in blood that is not taken with meat is little more than 2 per cent absorbed.³⁵ Dracula should take a bite along with his blood.’