chocolate increases iron, sometimes

I just wanted to donate a pint of blood and the technicians at the blood donor center would not let me do it. They said my blood iron count fell below acceptable levels – an old story for me. I went home, took another iron pill, washed it down with orange juice (the vitamin C helps keep the iron in the body). I planned to try to get a bit of rest on the blood donor couch again – soon.

A couple days later, on my way home from shopping, I stumbled across the blood donor bus and decided to try again.

Only in these circumstances would I do what I did next. I walked in and told a total stranger to take a sharp instrument and poke me in the tip of my finger.

Okay, what I really said was, “I am here to donate blood, but please check my iron level first. It was low the last time I tried to donate.”

She held my hand, gripped my finger tightly and jabbed the side of the finger with fewer nerve endings. She wiped off the first drop of blood and threw it away then insisted on milking my finger until enough blood appeared to be sucked into the plastic testing device. In the briefest of time, a machine spun the blood, measured it for iron and spat out a number. The technician shook her head, “Not quite high enough. Would you like to eat a snack and see if that helps?”

“I doubt that would do much good.”

“Eat an Oreo cookie.”

“What?!”

“It’s chocolate. It has iron in it.”

I looked at her skeptically.

“Think about it.”

Skeptically, I walked to the snack tray, picked up a package of Oreos and read the ingredients. She spoke the truth. Eating the small package would provide me with ten percent of my daily needs in iron. Really! I did not know that. I had learned something new. All this time I have been reading the nutritional content on packages to discover the number of calories, the fat count and the fiber, but I had never focused on the iron content in a serving.

Okay, the cookies probably had too many calories, but I take any legitimate reason offered to have a cookie break, especially when the cookies are Oreos – one of my favorite store bought cookies.

The technician pricked another finger, sucked some blood with the plastic tester and pronounced me fit enough to donate. She then proceeded to question the most intimate details of my life, squeezed my upper arm with a tourniquet and invaded my exposed veins and began draining off a pint of my blood.

In return she gave me a t-shirt, another snack and permission to eat a healthy meal later that day.

I left smiling victoriously. Sure I had had my arm jabbed with a needle but at the cost of my life’s blood I had learned an important fact. Chocolate contains iron.

Such a victory. I posted the information on Facebook and my friends rejoiced with me. Others enslaved to the cacao bean celebrated yet another excuse to eat chocolate.

A couple months passed and the date neared when I would be again eligible to donate blood. Just to be sure I met the health standards I began shopping for chocolate.

I flipped multiple boxes and packages over to read the ingredients. To my dismay I discovered that not all chocolate is created equal. Candy bars contained anywhere from two percent up to 15 percent of the RDA (recommended dietary allowance) of iron. I looked at cookies and was shocked to see that one package of purported chocolate cookies contained absolutely no iron. Oh, so just grabbing a chocolate candy bar or cookie would not guarantee to up my ante in iron.

If I really wanted to make sure eating the sweet would help increase my iron so I could donate blood I needed to consume something besides just calories.

I spent the next 15 minutes comparing the nutritional content of cookies and candy before I found a simple cookie with 15 percent of the RDA for iron.

The next day I tracked down the donor bus. The same technician saw me coming. She whipped out an fresh finger jabber and took a sample even as another tech took my blood pressure. I thought sure getting jabbed in my finger would raise my blood pressure, but the machine denied it had happened. Within minutes she declared me perfect with an adequate blood pressure reading and a satisfactory iron count for the day’s donation. I whipped through the whole process in less than 45 minutes and continued on with my day, assured that my health and lifestyle qualified me for to receive yet another blood donor T-shirt for my closet – and that I could share a bit of my good health with someone who really needs it.

(Joan Hershberger is a staff writer at the News-Times and author of “Twenty Gallons of Milk and Other Columns from the El Dorado News-Times.” Email her at jhershberger@eldoradonews.com)


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