My discussion here stems from my personal frustration with my borderline anemia, and how across the medical community the common recommendation for anemia is to eat “leafy greens and red meat”. Why red meat? My diet is primarily plant-based, and I get frustrated when I’m told that I must eat red meat to improve my anemia (seeing as I readily eat leafy greens already). On another note even if you aren’t vegetarian recent studies have demonstrated a correlation between red meat consumption and increased incidence of mortality 12-36%, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer (1,2). What really is going on? Is eating red meat necessary for improving our iron levels? The short answer is no, but you have to take a deeper look into what anemia