Could your breakfast cereal be ageing you?

UNLESS you have been diagnosed with iron-deficient anaemia, cut back on your consumption of red meat and do not take iron supplements.

Red meat is rich in a type of iron that’s absorbed more efficiently than the iron in plants. This iron increases your body’s absorption of all dietary iron.

So when you’re buying packaged foods in the supermarket, check the ingredients list carefully. If it contains words such as ‘enriched’, ‘ferric’, ‘ferrous’ or simply ‘iron’, skip it. Many popular breakfast cereals are overloaded with iron. In Britain, the recommended daily amount is 8.7mg for men and 14.8 mg for women.

However, this amount applies to premenopausal women. Once over 50, a woman’s daily recommended intake is 8.7 mg.

But I am convinced that for the over-50s the daily intake for men and women should be little more than 3-5 mg — and it’s frighteningly easy to bust that limit on a daily basis.

The British Nutrition Foundation estimates that breakfast cereals contribute between 20 to 30 per cent of the average iron intake for British consumers — which is alarming when you consider a 50g bowl of cornflakes contains 4mg. Indeed, your iron load can swiftly add up. There’s 6mg of iron in an average steak, and the iron fortification of white flour means each slice of bread tops up your levels by 1 g or more.

When baking, try using French flour (if it’s milled in France, where they do not have to add iron) or wholemeal flour (which is not fortified), oat flour, rye flour, ground almonds, brown rice flour or millet flour.

Cutting back on red meat doesn’t mean you miss out on protein, and the good news is that alternative sources of protein contain compounds that inhibit iron absorption (in eggs it’s the protein phosvitin that limits iron absorption and in dairy products it is the calcium).

Plant sources of protein, such as soya beans, grains (rice and wheat), leafy greens, herbs, and vegetables contain other important minerals and are also able to inhibit iron absorption in various ways.

Though spinach is traditionally heralded as an ‘excellent’ source of iron, when eaten raw, it contains an inhibitor called oxalic acid that naturally binds with minerals such as calcium and iron, making it harder for the body to absorb them.