Atlet especially distance running athletes, vegetarian athletes, female athletes and athletes who consume meat less than 1 times per week had a risk of iron deficiency. Female athletes who have regular menstrual periods will have a risk of iron deficiency is higher when compared with male athletes. Once the athletes were also vegetarians compared with non-vegetarian athletes, although for this vegetarian athletes can be met through the selection of the consumption of vegetables or fruits that are appropriate. Especially for long-distance runners, tugs at the legs to run the hard surface can cause footstrike risk of hemolysis, namely rupture of red blood cells which is accompanied by the release of hemoglobin into blood plasma as a result of foot tugs on a hard surface.

In the body, iron is the main function in the production of oxygen-carrying component of hemoglobin and myoglobin. Hemoglobin contained in red blood cells and is a protein that serves to to transport oxygen to various body tissues while the myoglobin present in muscle cells and serves to store and distribute oxygen to the muscle cells. Besides functioning to produce hemoglobin and myoglobin, iron can also be stored in ferritin protein, hemosidirin in the liver, as well as in the spinal cord. As an indicator of the level of iron in the body, ferritin circulating in the blood can be used to assess iron status in the body.

Lots of iron contained in animal products, especially red meat, eggs and fish, besides a lot of iron also contained in various types of beans such as soybean and mung beans, various kinds of vegetables and fruits. In general, according to the source, efficiency of iron have different absorption in the body. Iron derived from animal products or also known as iron would be more easily absorbed by the body, while the iron is derived from vegetables and fruits, or the so-called iron-nonhem will be more difficult to be absorbed by the body.