So Anemia, eh?

I had my 1 hour glucose test on Monday and the result came back negative for gestational diabetes - yay! But my doctor said that the blood test did show that I'm becoming anemic, which explains my recent bouts with dizziness, exhaustion, etc. So I'm adding an iron supplement to my prenatal vitamin.

Being the good pregnant lady that I am, I decided to google what foods are high in iron so I can make sure I'm getting lots of it from food, too. This is what my first search came up with:

Iron rich food	Iron Content	RDA % *	Calories
Cockles boiled	28mg	155%	50
Black Pudding	20mg	111%	300
Liver	9mg	50%	190
Fish Paste	9mg	50%	170
Faggots	8.3mg	46%	270
Kidney	8mg	44%	170
Venison	7.8mg	43%	200
Heart	7.7mg	43%	180
Mussels boiled	7mg	39%	90
Liver Pate	7mg	39%	190
Liver Sausage	6.4mg	36%	312
Goose	5mg	28%	320
Pheasant	5mg	28%	220
Shrimps canned	5mg	28%	95
Haggis	4.8mg	27%	310
Sardines canned	4.5mg	27%	180
Anchovies canned	4mg	22%	285
Whitebait	4mg	22%	310
Tongue Ox	3mg	17%	300
Pilchards canned	2.7mg	16%	130
Beef lean	2.5mg	16%	240

Seriously? Maybe I should have typed in "Food high in iron that I'll actually want to eat." Because when it comes down to it, the fact that boiled cockles and black pudding have lots of iron does not make me any more inclined to a) find out what those actually are or b) even attempt to eat them.

You'll be happy to hear that my second result was much more pleasing to my taste buds, and didn't make me want to go throw up:

Iron Rich Foods containing Heme Iron

	Excellent Sources		Good Sources
	Clams Pork Liver Oysters Chicken Liver Mussels Beef Liver		Beef Shrimp Sardines Turkey

Iron Rich Foods containing Non-Heme Iron

	Excellent Sources		Good Sources
	Enriched breakfast cereals Cooked beans and lentils Pumpkin seeds Blackstrap Molasses		Canned beans Baked potato with skin Enriched pasta Canned asparagus

Now, I have to tell you that the "excellent sources of iron" in the first chart made me a little nervous, since I'm definitely not a fan of liver. The second list sounds right up my alley, especially since my current diet is made up mostly of cereal, pasta, beans, and potatoes. I was very relieved to find this little warning at the bottom of the page:

Warning: Pregnant women should not eat liver because of its very high Vitamin A content. Large amounts of Vitamin A can be harmful to the baby.

Hah! Second google result blows the first one out of the water because not only did they give me a list of stuff I not only don't mind eating, but actually prefer, but also because they gave me reason to not feel bad for not liking liver. Awesome.