Curries prepared in a traditional iron pot may be a very good source of iron, British doctors said Friday.
Iron deficiency anemia is the most common nutritional problem in the world, and doctors are always telling people to eat iron-rich foods like spinach or liver.But Sue Fairweather-Tait and colleagues at the Institute of Food Research in Norwich, England, found that spicy Indian food cooked in an iron wok was replete with dietary iron.
"The use of cast iron cookware has been shown to increase the iron content of food," Fairweather-Tait wrote in the British Medical Journal.
Iron cookware is not widely used in Britain but spicy Balti curries, which have become very fashionable, are.
The researchers tested the iron content of three commercially prepared curries and found the Balti went off the scale in terms of iron content.
"These data suggest that the iron intake of people consuming traditional balti meals could be extremely high, falling well outside the normal range of dietary intake," they wrote.
"Our findings show that balti meals not only add spice to your life but also provide a useful quantity of potentially absorbable iron."