Iron is an essential element. We need enough iron to produce red blood corpuscles. Red blood corpuscles are important to transport oxygen to all our cells to produce energy. Aluminium is not an essential element. For decades we thought that aluminum will not be absorbed in our intestine and will not reach our blood. It is because we had no standard analytical methods to estimate low amount of aluminium in the blood. Standard methods are now available to estimate aluminium in blood with advanced instruments like AAS or ICP-MS.

If there is no relation between iron and aluminium where does the problem lie? There is a very big problem because both have the same transport mechanism from our intestine to blood. Vitamin C is needed for iron absorption and it is also needed for the absorption of aluminium. To put it in simple words, if the amount of aluminium in our food is high then vitamin C and the transport proteins support the absorption of aluminium than iron. The result can be iron deficiency.

We know the problem of iron deficiency very well. So it is better to avoid food rich in aluminium. The contamination of aluminum is another big problem. If we could avoid both we can achieve very good iron absorption to be healthy.