Effects of consuming an iron supplement with a meal containing animal or plant-based meat on indicators of iron status and anemia in women of reproductive age with iron deficiency: a randomized, controlled study.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Copper (Supplement) in the context of anemia, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Animal meat contains heme iron, which is more bioavailable and better absorbed than nonheme iron found in plants.

Animal meat also contains a "meat factor" that stimulates absorption of nonheme iron.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were young adults and adults, women only.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind and parallel-group.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Copper (Supplement) and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

As a double-blind Copper (Supplement) study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

The Copper (Supplement) group and the comparison group ran side by side rather than switching.

Meals were identical except for the addition of Animal or Plant.

The primary outcomes were biochemical indicators of iron status and anemia.

Data are presented as means ± standard deviation.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Anemia, Iron-Deficiency, Dietary Supplements, Ferritins, Iron, Meat, Iron, Dietary and Nutritional Status.

Author keywords: beef, iron deficiency and plant-based meat alternative.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and parallel-group study of Copper (Supplement) in people with anemia.

Its findings take up roughly 4 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2025 (The American journal of clinical nutrition), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Copper (Supplement) compound page, Anemia research.