Do I have to eat meat? Iron problem.

I have had very low iron due to vegetarianism as well. Couldn't donate to the Red Cross for it. On my eighth failed try I vented to the Red Cross attendant, as I was taking a good deal of iron supplements but it wasn't doing anything for my levels. She recommended I try http://www.vitaminshoppe.com/store/en/browse/sku_detail.jsp?id=NT-1922 It's an iron supplement that has a whole host of other things in it to make the iron more bioavailable. Holy crap. Only a week or two after taking one of the tablets daily my iron was well within the normal ranges. It is about $10 for 30 tablets, but it is well, well worth it and I highly suggest you try it for a month to see if it works for you before giving up on the vegetarianism. Plus it turns your pee neon, which is pretty cool. I think this is the high amount of vitamin C in it though.

I was going to say something about bioavailability, about humanely-farmed meat animals, and about iron metabolism, but Forktine and the best answers you marked have said it very eloquently already. So I'll confine myself to noting that RLS is a multifactorial condition and it has recently (as in, the last couple of weeks) been shown that most cases of it have a strong genetic contribution. For this reason, rather than beating yourself up about the RLS you've "given yourself" by your carefully considered life choices, I would recommend that instead you focus on thinking about ways to live more healthily with the genes that you have. I agree that the ways to do this would include bioavailable iron supplementation and possibly considering eating a certain amount of meat if that can be ethically acceptable to you.

I think that you can eat meat and still be an ethical person, but there are many very thoughtful vegetarians and vegans who would disagree. I believe that by eating meat primarily from small producers who treat the animals well, don't over-medicate them, and kill them humanely, that my eating meat fits into the ethical boundaries of a decent life. I also try very hard to (almost) never waste any meat. It doesn't bother me to throw out a bunch of moldy carrots, but to me, throwing out meat is saying that the animal died for nothing. If a living creature is going to die for my health and convenience, I will respect that by putting that meat to good use. I would strongly suggest finding one or two local meat producers, visiting their farms to see the animals and hear them describe how the raise, treat, and kill the animals, and then buying all your meat from those producers. You may pay a lot more per pound than you will at the big grocery store (although sometimes not -- small producers can have good prices sometimes) but you are buying both a guarantee of high quality and of ethical treatment of the animals and the land. If you are in a town that has a farmer's market, asking around there should find you someone selling beef, lamb, and chicken. In a really rural area, there are always local farmers and 4-H kids advertising meat in the classified section of the local paper. Big cities probably have a specialized butcher offering high-end meat, which will cost you more but have a great selection. And of course you can mail-order it, but I'd buy local if you have that option at all.

http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/iron.htm

Hmm, well it says: Non-heme iron, 60 percent of the iron in animal tissue and all the iron in plants (fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts) is less well absorbed. Vegan diets only contain non-heme iron. Because of this, iron recommendations are higher for vegetarians (including vegans) than for non-vegetarians. I think, and of course you need to make your own best health decisions within your own comfort levels, that it's simply saying you have to eat more of it to get the same absorption. But you have information you're happy with now, so all is well! Good luck!

Biologically useful sources of iron, yes. If my body can't use it, its not going to do me much good.

When I was a wee nipper in the 80s, there was this commercial on tv with some then-famous tennis player with an accent, maybe a South African accent. All I remember was her playing tennis and narrating something about "Geritol, for iron-poor blood" which, in her accent sounded like "Geritol, foh ion-poh blod." So there you go. That'll be $200. Please pay the receptionist.

A vegetarian or vegan diet is not by definition lower in iron than an omnivore diet. Because many people eat such an unhealthy diet, meat is an easy source of iron. If you eat a really healthy diet, with a variety of green vegetables and pulses every day, and enough fruit and other vegetables, so you get the vitamin-c iron combo that makes the iron much more bio-available, iron is not a problem. The fact that plant-iron is less bio available is a good thing. Many diseases are related to too much iron in our western diet, and that is solely due to the heme iron that is found in meat. The type of iron is not a problem, IF you get enough, and if you also have an otherwise healthy diet and body. I agree that a supplement is wise to get your body healthy, but after that, it is very possible to get enough iron on a vegetarian diet. Studies that say that on average vegetarians have lower levels of nutrient X are useless to you as an individual if you know your diet is nothing like the diet of the general population. There will always be people and doctors who tell you miracle recoveries after they started eating meat again, and I do believe those stories, but they'll never know what would have happened if they had started to eat a really healthy vegetarian diet instead. Don't self-diagnose because of what you read on the internet, and know that most doctors don't know anything about nutrition.

Peanuts have significant amounts of iron. Start using natural peanut butter (the stuff that's just ground peanuts, it's more liquid-y and better for you) as a dip for vegetables (it is The Yum with baby carrots) or just in pb&j sandwiches. Oatmeal also has iron in it, believe it or not. I'm not sure if you have to have the old-fashioned type rather than the quick oats.