Cast Iron Pans To Boost Iron Intake

Every once in a while someone says something along the lines of the importance of using cast iron pans to boost your supplemental iron intake, or one of the advantages of using cast iron over other kinds of pans is that you can get your iron instead of having to take a supplement.
What very few people seem to understand, however, is that those statements are only partially true.

An awful lot depends on how well-seasoned your pan is, what you're cooking, and for what amount of time.

Here's what you need to know:

• Older, well-seasoned pans leach less iron than newer, less seasoned pans.
• Along the same lines, pans that food does not stick in release less iron than pans that food does stick in.

Those points should make sense.  If there's no real contact or exchange occurring because the food isn't sticking, there isn't going to be any additional iron in the food.

• Iron comes in different forms.  The iron in a cast iron pan is in the non-heme form, which is not assimilated, or taken up by the body, as easily as the heme form of iron.  This latter form is what is found in red meat.  And that is why red meat is a good source of iron.  
• Vitamin C and acidity help release iron from the pan and get it into your food.  So when using cast iron, cooking foods with tomato sauce or lemon juice or vinegar is going to get more iron into your food.
• Cooking with liquids, cooking longer, and stirring more often will all also get more iron into your food.  The more contact, the more opportunities for contact with the iron pan, the more iron will get into your food.  

There isn't an exact science to this, and unfortunately, one of the key reasons for using cast iron--the ability to season a pan well and develop a natural, yet virtually non-stick surface, actually prevents you from getting iron into your diet.  If you've got a really well-seasoned pan, the amount of iron you're getting is virtually zero.  You'll have to boost your intake in other ways.  Unless you want to scrub the pan every night, which is totally an option, and may be what you need to do in a collapse situation if you're anemic.

Links to related posts:
Cleaning Cast Iron Pans
15-Cent Baking Rack for Dutch Ovens
Dutch Oven Temperature Chart and Guidelines 

For further information:
http://thescienceofeating.com/2016/11/29/the-truth-about-cast-iron-pans-the-facts-that-you-need-to-know-2/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03670240701285079?scroll=top&needAccess=true
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(98)04450-X/fulltext
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12859709

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