Is baby spinach or kale higher in iron?
Kale, raw has 1.3× more iron per 100 g, 1.6 mg against 1.26 mg in Spinach, baby. That is 9% of the Daily Value against 7%.
Daily Value 18 mg. Per 100 g, so the two are directly comparable.
| Per 100 g | Spinach, baby | Kale, raw |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 21 kcal | 35 kcal |
| Protein | 2.85 g | 2.92 g |
| Total fat | 0.62 g | 1.49 g |
| Carbohydrate | 2.41 g | 4.42 g |
| Dietary fiber | 1.56 g | 4.1 g |
| Iron | 1.26 mg | 1.6 mg |
What this means for you
Kale is slightly ahead per 100 g, and both numbers are smaller than the reputation suggests. A cup of raw kale weighs about 21 g, which works out at roughly a third of a milligram of iron. An adult woman aged 19 to 50 needs 18 mg a day. You would need an unreasonable amount of salad to get there.
There is a second reason leafy greens underdeliver on iron. Plant iron is the non-heme form, and phytate in grains and beans and polyphenols in plant foods hold on to it. Absorption runs at roughly 5 to 12 per cent on a vegetarian diet against 14 to 18 per cent on a mixed one.
What to do with that
Treat greens as a good thing to eat for other reasons and get the iron from beans, lentils, fortified grains, meat or fish. Kale does have one genuine advantage in this pairing, which is its vitamin C, and vitamin C in the same meal helps you absorb non-heme iron.
Spinach is worth naming directly, because it carries the reputation. It is listed by the NIH as the example of a plant food that looks like a good iron source by content and has low availability in practice, thanks to the oxalate in its leaves. Baby spinach is the same leaf picked younger.
Written from the evidence cards and the data on this page, then checked back against the sources. Bioma Learn has no human medical reviewer at this time and we say so rather than invent one. Information, not medical advice. How we verify.
The comparison is per 100 g of edible portion, so the two foods sit on the same footing. Real portions differ, and so does how much of the nutrient your body actually absorbs from each food. The guide below has the absorption details.
Full guide: Iron: why the number on the label is not the number your body gets
Data: USDA FoodData Central, FDC IDs 1999632 and 323505. Checked 2026-09-15.