How long should I wait between drinking tea and eating iron enriched foods?
from a member of ivu-sci: I recall a lecture some years ago in which the speaker (a nutrition expert from Oxford Brookes University) recommended that vegetarians avoid drinking tea within one hour either side of a meal. How strict one should be about this clearly depends on other factors such as the strength of the tea and total non-haem iron intake. (Non-haem iron is the sort available to veg*ns, the other sort is haem iron which is found only in meat and fish.) Vitamin C enhances non-haem iron absorption, whilst phytate and polyphenols (including tannin found in tea and other beverages such as coffee and red wine) are major inhibitors of non-haem iron absorption. Thus, the iron absorbed from a meal containing non-haem iron may be doubled if the meal is taken with a glass of orange juice or reduced to one-third if taken with tea. Reference: Chapter 9 (Iron) of Essentials of Human Nutrition Jim Mann & A Stewart Truswell (eds) Oxford University Press, 1998.
