While you may have a rough idea of whether you’re hitting your daily macros, no one is out there counting their intake of every key vitamin and mineral. (Except maybe Bryan Johnson.) That means you likely have no idea if you’re getting enough iron.
It may not be as headline-grabbing as protein, but an iron-deficient diet can make you feel pretty horrible and wreck your health. If you want to bring your A-game to the gym—or at least be able to get through the day without crashing—you need to get enough iron. Unfortunately, most people aren’t.
“Typically, iron is one of those nutrients most people struggle with getting enough of,” says Dana Angelo White, RDN, a registered dietitian and certified athletic trainer. It’s not just menstruating women who are in that category either, which White says is a common misconception. According to the National Institutes of Health, one in four people in the U.S. doesn’t get enough iron.
Fortunately, there are many options that can easily be worked into any diet. We spoke to experts about their favourite iron rich foods below.
Why we need iron
What even is iron? “Iron is an essential nutrient that is commonly known as part of the red blood cell,” says Jonathan Valdez, RDN, a registered dietitian and owner of Genki Nutrition. He explains that iron’s primary role is carrying oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body.
“Iron helps produce hemoglobin, which is a protein in our red blood cells that carries oxygen from our lungs to the rest of the body. It also helps produce myoglobin, which is another protein that provides oxygen to our muscles,” says Chris Gunning, RDN, a clinical nutritionist at Rutgers University. Knowing that iron is crucial for literally every red blood cell to function properly puts into perspective how important it is. Your muscles literally can’t function without it, and not getting enough impairs muscle growth, as explained in a 2023 article in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle.
All three dietitians say that one of the main symptoms of not getting enough iron is fatigue. “This isn’t the type of fatigue you feel when you don’t get enough sleep the night before. It’s soul-crushing fatigue, especially in cases of extreme iron deficiency,” White says.
Besides fatigue, Gunning says that brittle nails, pale skin, headaches, lightheadedness, feeling cold in your hands and feet, shortness of breath, rapid heart rate, and chest pain are other signs you might be iron-deficient. “Symptoms present differently in different people,” White adds.
Not getting enough iron can also impact your immune system. This is because when your body’s cells don’t get enough iron, they can’t fight off infections as easily, as a 2025 scientific article in Annals of Medicine & Surgery states. Being deficient in iron can also make vaccines less effective, according to a 2025 scientific article published in Human Vaccines & Immunotherapies.
If you become super deficient in iron, that’s when some particularly strange symptoms can occur. “You can develop a desire to eat non-food items, like clay, soap, and dirt,” Gunning says, adding that this only happens in extreme iron deficiencies.
The National Institutes of Health recommends 8 milligrams of iron a day for adult men. Since you probably aren’t tracking your intake, the experts say that the best way to know if you’re iron-deficient is to get bloodwork done by your healthcare provider.
The best iron-rich foods
There are two types of iron: heme iron and non-heme iron. “‘Heme’ is Latin for ‘blood’ and heme iron comes from animal-based foods while non-heme iron comes from plant-based foods,” White says. She explains that while we don’t necessarily need heme iron, it’s better absorbed in the body than non-heme iron. “You get more bang for your buck with heme iron,” she says.
White recommends getting iron from both animal-based foods and plant-based foods because plant-based foods with iron come packaged with other important nutrients the body needs. Especially if you’re consuming plant-based iron sources, she recommends pairing it with a food high in vitamin C because vitamin C helps with iron absorption.
