HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 May 1942, Page 4

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

GET IRON INTO YOUR SYSTEM. (By the Health Department.) Next time you can be bothered, take a look round you in the tram or in the street, and notice how many pale and listless-looking people there are. Particularly women. Their make-up can t hide it. They are thin-blooded, anaemic, and their general physical condition is so run down that they are just inviting trouble. "They haven’t got the required number of sturdy little red corpuscles, simply because they are not getting the right amount of iron. The human body does not need much, but it has to have it in order to function normally. We can get all we want from our ordinary foods—providing always we eat the proper kind of food. It does not necessarily, follow that foods containing blood will be rich sources of iron, because blood is difficult to digest and its iron is not available for absorption. Liver, however, is a valuable source of iron, because it is the main organ in which iron is stored in a readily available form. Another excellent source is the yolk of an egg. Egg yolk, mixed with orange juice, another iron containing food, is a good mixture for treating an anaemic child. Wholemeal bread is an excellent source, a fact which is. recognised in Britain, where all bread now manufactured is wholemeal. Before the war over 90 per cent of the people consumed white bread, and anaemia among women and children was very widespread. Peas and beans, and the good old potato, are useful sources. Spinach, cabbage, silver beet, red beet, carrots, swedes —all these supply iron provided you don’t soak it all out by leaving them in water, or by using too much water to cook them in,, and then throwing it down the sink. Use a minimum of water, and save what is over after cooking. In; the fruit family, oranges, tomatoes, apples, apricots, prunes, raisins, currants and bananas all supply small quantities of iron. Unless you eat wholemeal bread and oatmeal, and cook the vegetables carefully, however, it is not easy to make up the daily iron ration.