Iron pots help fend off anemia

Science News, March 13, 1999 by N.S.

Ethiopian children eating food cooked in iron pots are less likely to have iron-deficient blood than their playmates who eat similar foods prepared in aluminum pots, a team led by researchers at McGill University in Montreal reports in the Feb. 27 LANCET.

After cooking Ethiopian foods in the lab, the scientists found that some iron from iron pots had leached into the food.

They compared 195 children who ate food cooked in aluminum pots with 207 children whose food was cooked in iron pots supplied by the researchers. After 1 year, blood tests showed that the iron-deficiency, or anemia, rate fell from 57 to 13 percent in the group with iron pots but only from 55 to 39 percent in the other. The children whose families used iron pots also grew slightly more, and none suffered from iron overload.

If larger studies show similar results, "real gains in child, adolescent, and maternal health should be possible at low cost," says Bernard Brabin of the Liverpool (England) School of Tropical Medicine.