>Actually, the arguement usually goes that people ate a lot more meat in
>their
>hunter-gatherer days and sufficient iron was stored to meet the needs of
>pregnancy in advance.

Actually, hunters and gatherers get the vast majority of their food intake
from plant foods collected by the women, and less than 10% from meat
hunted/collected by the men.  People in modern industrial countries consume
much much more meat than hunters and gatherers.

>
>Humans don't "excrete" iron.

I don't understand what you mean by this.  When you take in more iron than
you can use, it comes out in the feces.  This is indicated by their hard
(rock-like) consistency and their black color.  At least that's what I
learned in graduate school, and corresponded exactly to my own experience
during my third pregnancy, when I was taking scads of extra iron, but was
never able to get my blood levels up to where the doctor would let me donate
my own blood in case of post-partum hemorrhage (which had happened with my
second birth).

P.S.  I have asked Drs. Zimmer and Stuart-Macadam to take this conversation
to private e-mail.

Kathy Dettwyler