Plant- and animal-derived iron are structurally different things. In animals, iron is generally found in blood and muscle tissue, and it’s easy enough to process; humans usually have little trouble extracting iron from a nice hunk of steak. The iron in plants, however, is embedded in protein complexes that are much harder for the human gut to rip apart, and so they remain in the gastrointestinal tract and end up as waste, making iron consumption another concern for vegetarians. In this respect, humans are worse off than most animals. The majority of the creatures on earth are mostly or
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