Please suggest a good vegetarian diet for iron, vitamin b, and d deficiency.

Question

Recently, I got my blood test, and it says I have deficiencies in iron, vitamin B, and D. I want to make my diet balanced and nutritious. Please help me suggest easy recipes for all three meals and juices, smoothies, etc. I can also eat eggs. My breakfast usually includes kala chana, fruits, and besan chilla. For lunch, I have one sabji, one dal, and rotis, and the same goes for dinner. In between, I take fruits, salad, and nuts as snacks, and at night, I have a glass of milk. So, please also suggest to me what I'm missing in my diet and what else I can add.

Bea · Answer

Hi Ritika, I'm a dietitian, and I would highly suggest to first take the supplements for these nutrients. It's not uncommon for vegetarians to develop deficiencies so it's totally normal to take supplements when this happen. You can first consult a dietitian or a doctor in your area to get the proper guidance and prescription (although you can get this easily without prescription but talking to a professional can also help ease your mind). I highly advise this because eating it naturally from whole foods would not be enough to meet the requirements your body needs when you're deficient from these three nutrients, especially for iron! But supplementing a diet rich with iron, vitamin B and D + taking proper supplements can help your body surpass these deficiencies. When you are no longer deficient of these nutrients, then it would be possible for you to can focus on getting these three naturally from your diet. :)

Bea · Answer

Here's a good source for the natural sources of these nutrients in food: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/the-best-foods-for-vitamins-and-minerals. What can also help is purposely buying food products that are fortified with these nutrients. Like soy milk fortified with Vitamin D, or cereals fortified with B-vitamins. Reading the label will also help. slowly you can incorporate this in your current diet to improve it :)

Merlin White · Answer

May I suggest you take a look at the website foodstruct and go to nutrition search, there you can select the following "high in iron", "high in vitamin D" and "high in vitamin B*" you can then filter and remove all meat and fish products at the bottom of the page and you will then have a list of foods high in all those nutrients you require.  Then you may begin the search for recipes containing those items, there are many websites that will help you find them, including this one, yummly, foodcombo, supercook (I'm sure there are plenyty more)