Iron deficiency can cause anaemia

Let us read a story about anaemia and try to find out how it affects us.

Sowmya is 13 years old, and lives in Pipaliya village. She studies in the 7th standard in the village’s  middle school. Her parents work as farm labourers. She takes care of a number of household chores before going to school – filling water, sweeping, washing utensils, etc. When it’s time to go to the school she eats a roti or just drinks a cup of tea and runs to the school. She is good in sports and often comes first in running. But for a few weeks she has been getting tired easily. She doesn’t feel hungry too. She doesn’t feel like doing any work after waking up in the morning. She has also not been able to concentrate on her studies in the class. Her head started to spin and she felt dizzy while playing one day and everything became black in front of her eyes. She couldn’t play any longer and sat down. One of her friends fetched some water and another went to call the teacher. Sushila madam checked the colour of her eyelids and tongue. They looked really pale. The teacher suspected that Sowmya has anaemia.

 

Sushila madam arranged for a discussion on anaemia after a few days. She checked the eyelids and tongue of every student in the class. Nearly 12 of the 30 students in the class had a pale colouration on their eyelids and tongues. These could be signs of deficiency of iron in blood.

 

Afterwards the teacher described other signs of iron deficiency. Several students shared their experiences. Najnin said that her waist and shins ache in the morning. Ajay said that her mother works a lot and eats less, thus she is weak.

The teacher said that these are all signs of iron deficiency. Protein and iron are necessary in our diets for our body to make blood. The students gave quick replies to the question of where we can get protein from – pulses, legumes, milk, meat, eggs, fish, etc. But they didn’t know which food items contain iron.

 

Then the teacher asked the students to bring some raw food items on the next day, whose list is given below. They would do an experiment to find out which of these contain iron.

Make a guess as to which of these items will contain more iron.