Tracked as a goal
Iron tracking
- Unit
- mg
- Default goal
- 18 mg
- Direction
- Reach
What it is, and why people track it
Iron carries oxygen in the blood. Deficiency is among the most common nutritional deficiencies worldwide, and is the reason a lot of people are handed a specific nutrient to watch for the first time.
Food iron comes in two forms and they are not interchangeable. Haem iron, from animal sources, is absorbed far more readily than non-haem iron from plants — and absorption of the latter improves markedly alongside vitamin C and is reduced by tea and coffee at the same meal.
Setting your number
AIM targets 18 mg a day, the label daily value, which is set around the needs of menstruating women. Adult men and post-menopausal women need closer to 8 mg. If a clinician gave you a number, use theirs.
How good is the estimate?
Moderate, and fortification dominates it — a fortified cereal can carry an entire day's iron in one bowl. Cast-iron cookware genuinely adds iron to food, and no photograph will ever know that.
Questions
- Does AIM distinguish haem from non-haem iron?
- The standard metric is total iron. If absorption matters to you, add haem iron as a custom metric, and note that vitamin C at the same meal improves non-haem absorption.
Also in this group
Sodium
A cap, defaulting to 2,300 mg a day. Most sodium is not the salt shaker, which is why an estimate from the meal itself is more useful than a note to “use less salt”.
Cholesterol
Dietary cholesterol as a cap, defaulting to 300 mg a day — tracked because people are asked to track it, with a note on what current guidance actually says.
Potassium
A goal, not a cap — most people fall short. Potassium is the counterweight to sodium in blood pressure guidance and is missing from most macro trackers entirely.
Calcium
A standard metric with a 1,000 mg daily goal — worth watching on a dairy-free or plant-based diet, where the shortfall is easy to miss.
Track iron without a database search
AIM estimates it on every meal from a photo or a sentence, and lets you correct anything it got wrong just by saying so.