is it healthier to eat no meat?

[FlatAssembler]

It's a different thing if you know you actually have anemia and that it's actually caused by a lack of iron. In that case, maybe taking heme iron supplements is justified. In general, it certainly isn't.

Dude, 95% of the iron in your body IS heme iron. When that percentage drops, the obvious thing to do is replace it, with either diet or supplements. You don't need to be a Croatian philologist to understand that taking iron is a reasonable treatment for iron deficiency.

I'm unsure why a doctor would prescribe iron for someone who is not iron deficient.

Boru

Dude, what's your point with that? For almost everybody, the vast majority of cholesterol in their blood is LDL. Would you argue that it's therefore somehow a good thing? That would be silly, obviously.

I don't know whether heme iron or free iron is a better treatment for iron deficiency. Both have side-effects. The heme iron side effect of significantly increased colon cancer risk is life threatening, though, and I don't know whether free iron has any life-threatening (rather than just uncomfortable) side effects. Heme iron is better absorbed, though, especially in people who are deficient in Vitamin C (which is about 12% of population). It would be interesting to do a study comparing all-cause mortality of anemic patients who take free iron versus those who take heme iron. I don't know what to expect. But what I do know for certain is that taking heme iron increases all-cause mortality in the general population, particularly the agonizing deaths from colon cancer.