Don’t Hold Back Your Inner Iron Woman

Daily affirmations have been shown by science to have some powerful positive effects. For example, self-affirmations have been shown to decrease health-deteriorating stress.

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The dietitian in me loves this study that found they can make us less likely to dismiss harmful health messages, and this study that found affirmations can successfully influence health promoting behaviors and actually encourage us to eat more fruit and vegetables!!!

In a broad sense the practice of daily affirmations makes us more resilient to difficulties when they arise. Whether it’s social pressures, health information that makes us feel uncomfortable, or feelings of exclusion, having an adaptive sense of self is a good thing.

Now, hopefully you recognize that the affirmation at the top is inspired by the movie The Help and that my grammar skills are not that poor. I thought it was appropriate to open with this line and because I also know that my readers are kind, smart, important plus Superheros in their own sense! I created just the recipe to help fuel you during your days fighting crime and kicking ass….. or just being a boss woman in the office and raising kids (same thing).

This recipe is full of iron. Iron is one of those interesting things because our bodies need it but it’s not always absorbed that well. There are two different types of iron, heme and non-heme. Heme iron is more easily absorbed than non-heme.

How much iron our bodies absorb are dependent on a few things. For example, a body deficient in iron stores will absorb better than one that is sufficient in stores. Certain dietary factors also affect absorption. Eating iron from a heme source (red meat, poultry, salmon, tuna, iron fortified cereals, dried beans, eggs) will increase your iron absorption from non-heme sources (whole grains, legumes, nuts, vegetables, and greens). Combining iron sources with sources of vitamin C also helps as well as avoiding coffee or tea at the same time as eating iron sources.

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Do you workout often? No, thats not intended to be a pick up line – but possibly a reason that your iron needs might be higher than others. The type of workout you do even impacts your needs. Runners may experience foot strike anemia or foot strike hemolysis. Basically this means that every time your foot strikes the ground it destroys red blood cells.

Research has show that although a single hemolytic episode is unlikely to cause iron loss of clinical significance, daily or twice-daily hemolytic episodes during hard training may have a cumulative effect that might be significant; athletes such as marathoners with high training volumes would be particularly at high risk.

Most people aren’t training like a marathon level runners but a few other things can put you at risk for anemia. For example, being a woman of child bearing age are at greater risk because of the increased level of red blood cells lost during menstruation. This is especially true if you experience heavy periods. Bottom line iron intake is very important for girls and women and even more so for those that are very active.

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All this brings me to this amazing granola recipe that is rich in iron. It’s super easy and lasts all week when sprinkled on yogurt or as a quick snack to go.

To be honest when I first set out to make this I did not have one of the main ingredients that we all know (probably only some love) in my pantry. Molasses. I found this funny because some would consider this somewhat of a basic. It also always used to appear in my text books in school as a good source of plant based iron and every time I read it I was thinking, ‘Okay, but who actually eats molasses enough for it to be a good source of iron?!’. This recipes finally proved me wrong that molasses can be use in more than just gingersnap cookies.

Another ingredient to note in this recipe is the iron- fortified cereal. I will leave it up to you which brand you choose but some with the most are General Mills Total, Quaker Life, Post Grape Nuts, and Kashi Go Lean cereals.

One more CRUCIAL piece to this recipe that makes it SO MUCH BETTER is the almond butter! I dolloped (is that even an actual cooking term?) teaspoon sized globs (now I’m really getting technical) of almond butter in the oats and rolled them around so the oats stuck on all sides. The finished product has these little chunks of almond butter in them surrounded by all the crunch- so good!