Since knowing that his wife is pregnant, Mr. Zhao goes home every three days to buy dates. He heard that pregnant women are prone to anemia and jujube is a good blood supplement. However, not long ago, my wife, who was nearly 6 months pregnant, went to the hospital for a checkup. The trace element test showed iron deficiency anemia.
How can I still be anemic if I eat jujubes every day? Mr. and Mrs. Zhao couldn\’t figure it out.
During the interview, the reporter found that many people, like Mr. Zhao and his wife, believe that red dates are good for replenishing blood. In fact, this is just a beautiful misunderstanding.
There are two main types of anemia related to nutrition, one is iron deficiency anemia, and the other is megaloblastic anemia caused by lack of folic acid and vitamin B12.
Let’s talk about iron deficiency anemia first. Although red dates are rich in iron, like other iron-rich plant foods, the absorption rate of iron is very low and cannot be well utilized by the human body. Therefore, it is difficult to replenish blood by eating red dates.
Xue Yuzhu, director of the Health Care Department of Zhengzhou Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine and nutrition consultant of Yuankang Vocational Training School, pointed out that iron-rich animal foods such as lean meat, animal blood, and animal liver are easily absorbed and utilized by the human body. Body. Eating animal blood and liver twice is far better than eating red dates to replenish blood.
Let’s talk about megaloblastic anemia caused by lack of folic acid and vitamin B12. Although folic acid is widely found in green leafy vegetables, and jujubes are also rich in folic acid, folic acid is extremely unstable and is easily lost when exposed to heat and light. Most of the jujubes that people usually eat are processed dried jujubes. Folic acid loss will not be small. In addition, vitamin B12 mainly exists in animal foods, and the content in jujube is very small.
It can be seen that no matter how much red dates are eaten, it is difficult to prevent and treat anemia. On the contrary, jujube peel is rich in crude fiber, which is not easy to digest and causes certain damage to the gastrointestinal tract. Therefore, pregnant women should not eat more jujubes. Two or three a day is enough.