Oddly, it would appear that in New Zealand at least, it is not uncommon for toddlers to be deficient in iron:
A survey carried out by Dr Elaine Ferguson at the University of Otago showed that up to 1 in 3 toddlers have low iron levels. Although severe iron deficiency is rare, these high levels of iron depletion are a concern because they increase a child’s risk of developing iron deficiency anaemia which can have serious consequences.In a country full of delicious lamb, which most children seem to like a lot, this should not be happening.
Lamb is really expensive in NZ. I think it all gets exported.
ReplyDeleteFresh mussels are, however, ridiculously cheap - I'm not sure how much iron they have.
Maybe more mercury than iron!
ReplyDeleteOh, seems I am wrong. It seems they are a good source of iron:
ReplyDeletewww.healthcastle.com/iron.shtml
By the way, so they only eat the greenlipped variety there, or are the black ones we eat here also available? The green lipped ones, in my experience, can be a bit too big and chewy.
I recall only the green lipped mussels from Havelock at the northern end of the South Island (or The Mainland, as they prefer). The ones we had in restaurants were great and I was annoyed because all the supermarkets had these dispensers full of fresh mussels at $4NZ a kg and the motels, while they had good cooking facilities, all banned cooking seafood.
ReplyDeleteI suspect if you got really fresh green lipped ones cooked properly they would be fine.
Perhaps the NZ seafood chowder, largely consisting of mussels, could be fed to the children at school to boost their iron. (Like the school milk programs in the past.)
Anyway, I suspect it's your fault that I love mussels now because of being introduced to them at the Belgian Beer House.