(And yes, they are in the tuna section in my grocery store in the states.)

Also, thank you for this recipe. Those of us who are, for whatever reason, not as Twitter-literate would not have known about the clamtastic iron content.

I’ve never had a variation with tomatoes or basil in it, though–sounds interesting.

(long time reader, first time commenter—hi!)

It would be interesting to know how that works, exactly. I mean, some part of the brain has to settle on The Food to crave. What flips the switch from “don’t ever think about bacon” to “BACON!”? Especially if the body has no reason to believe that bacon is necessary in itself at that moment?

I’ve generally assumed that some of the foods I crave are to fix something, and most of them are just sort of weird, unpredictable anomalies, perhaps from the same place that brings us dreams and abstract art. Maybe I should increase the variety of food I eat.

I never pay attention to the USDA, RDA, BMI, etc. recommendations.

Anyhow, iron is stored in the liver, bone marrow, and spleen, and when your red blood cells die, the iron contained in them (in the hemoglobin inside the cells) is recycled. So it isn’t something that your body just excretes and gets rid of and needs replacing every day. You do have stores, so it’s possible that you can eat iron-rich foods only occasionally and still be fine. If you’re low on iron, your body also kicks up its ability to absorb what you DO get in your diet to help compensate for that.

tl;dr – Your body is smart.

One of the interesting things I’ve noticed since eating more intuitively is that there will be times when I crave meat (or more often, sushi and spinach). I usually like sushi and spinach, but in these times, I will contemplate even liver, which under normal circumstances sort of squicks me. If I ignore this sudden urge, I will get stronger cravings, to the point where I start obsessing over foods I normally hate (hello, kale!). One slab of beef, or a couple meals of sushi, or a load of collard greens later, I’m pretty much back to ignoring the red meat and green leafy vegetables.

It’s kind of reassuring, actually, that without my watching it, my body will tell me very clearly what it needs. I don’t know if this works across the board – maybe I’m missing vitamin K or something, but iron is the one I’ve noticed really strongly, and it makes me feel more confident that if I was too deficient in something, one of my random cravings would cover it. (And I do mean random – now that I’ve stopped dieting, it’s interesting to note that cravings are not restricted to energy dense items. I *don’t* just love fried sweet things!)

Question, if you have time: does iron stick around longer than some other nutrients? I only get iron food cravings every 2-6 weeks, but I can only go a day or two without fresh fruit before feeling myself going crazy. I’m sure not all cravings are about need – I just really like fruit – but it would be interesting to know what’s going on.

I’m quite sure I’ve seen them in jars, not sure on cans. Then again, I dislike tuna, except raw, so I wouldn’t be over in that section.

For blood though, besides blood sausages and beggar’s meal (that is the word for word translation, meal meaning the kind of food like oat meal or acorn meal) it is usually put on sandwich bread, salt , pepper, some fried onion and garlic and then baked. (the part that is not used else)
Awesome stuff again

Here, use this instead: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/

And look up all the foods you want to your heart’s content!

Anyway, here is what the USDA has to say:

100 g of cooked pork spleen has 22.23 g of iron

100 g of cooked beef liver has 6.54 g of iron

100 g of canned clams has 27.96 g of iron

So, YES. Spleen wins out over liver. But clams still win.

I have to say, though, just like I did at the end of the recipe? This kind of thing bores me to tears. I’d rather read the dictionary than look things up in a nutrient database.

the table they have shows that spleen ha about twice the content of iron of liver, kidneys about 3 times, and blood contains, unsurprisingly most of all

(Boiled [with all the other stuff in the large outdoor cauldron] fresh pig spleen with salt , onion and bread is awesome food , and pretty much the first thing one eats when killing a pig, at least in my country)