Tea and Iron Absorption

[Guest guest]

I was having dinner with friends last night and the waitress was asking if we would like tea to go with our meal. One of my friends highlighted that his wife read somewhere that it is not good to drink tea with meal as it reduces the iron intake from our meal. I found it quite interesting and when I woke up this morning, I googled to see if I can find any information regarding this.It wasn't difficult to find information in the internet at all nowadays – as long as you spend some time on it. The search returned several results related and non-related. In all of the related results, they had shown similar information – that tea reduces the iron intake to a certain extent and it really depends. I will come to that in a short while.Before we go on, let's take a look at the mineral iron, with the symbol Fe in the periodic table. From my previous knowledge in school, I knew that iron is an essential part in hemoglobin for oxygen transport around the body. According to the British Nutrition Foundation, they stated, "Iron is also required for energy metabolism and is necessary for neurological development of developing embryos. Iron is also needed for the normal function of the immune system." Iron can be found in foods in two forms, namely haem and non-haem iron. Haem iron is found mainly in meat, liver, offal and meat products. According to a document by the UK Tea Council, typically 20-30% of haem iron is absorbed from the diet and the level of haem iron absorption is relatively unaffected by other dietary factors.

Read the whole article at: http://wisdomnet.blogspot.com/2008/02/tea-and-iron-absorption.html