Bok choy contains a moderate amount of iron, not a high amount. One cup of cooked bok choy provides about 1.8 mg of iron, which covers roughly 10% of the daily recommended value. That puts it in the middle of the pack among leafy greens, well behind spinach but still a meaningful contributor to your daily intake, especially because bok choy has a unique advantage when it comes to how well your body can actually absorb that iron.
Iron in Raw vs. Cooked Bok Choy
A cup of raw bok choy (about 70 grams) contains just 0.56 mg of iron. That number jumps significantly once you cook it, simply because cooking shrinks the leaves and you end up eating a lot more plant material per cup. One cup of cooked, boiled bok choy (about 170 grams) delivers 1.8 mg of iron, more than triple what you’d get from a cup of the raw leaves.
This is a common pattern with leafy greens. If you’re eating bok choy specifically for its nutrients, cooking it and eating a larger volume will always give you more iron per serving than tossing raw leaves into a salad.
How Bok Choy Compares to Other Greens
Spinach is the green that most people think of for iron, and it does contain substantially more. A single cup of raw spinach (the same 70-gram weight as a cup of raw bok choy) has 1.9 mg of iron, more than three times the amount in raw bok choy. On paper, spinach wins easily.
But raw numbers don’t tell the whole story. The iron in all plant foods is non-heme iron, a form your body absorbs less efficiently than the heme iron found in meat. And one of the biggest factors that blocks non-heme iron absorption is oxalate, a naturally occurring compound found in many leafy greens. Spinach is notoriously high in oxalates, which means a significant portion of its iron passes through your body without being absorbed.
Bok choy, on the other hand, is classified as a very low oxalate food, containing only about 1 mg of oxalate per cup of raw leaves. That’s essentially negligible. So while bok choy has less total iron than spinach, the percentage of iron your body actually takes in from bok choy is likely higher than you’d expect from the numbers alone.
Getting More Iron Out of Bok Choy
Since the iron in bok choy is non-heme iron, pairing it with vitamin C makes a real difference in absorption. Vitamin C converts non-heme iron into a form your gut can absorb more readily. Conveniently, bok choy itself contains a decent amount of vitamin C, so it comes with a built-in boost. You can amplify this further by cooking bok choy with citrus juice, bell peppers, tomatoes, or other vitamin C-rich ingredients.
Eating bok choy alongside a source of heme iron (like chicken, beef, or fish) also improves absorption of the plant-based iron. A stir-fry with bok choy and a small portion of meat is one of the most efficient ways to maximize the iron from both sources. On the flip side, drinking tea or coffee with your meal can reduce iron absorption because of their tannin content.
Where Bok Choy Fits in Your Diet
At 10% of your daily iron needs per cooked cup, bok choy is a solid contributor but not a powerhouse on its own. For context, the recommended daily intake of iron is 18 mg for women of reproductive age and 8 mg for adult men and postmenopausal women. A cup of cooked bok choy covers about 10% of the higher target and closer to 22% of the lower one.
If you’re relying on plant-based sources for most of your iron, bok choy works best as part of a rotation that includes lentils, beans, tofu, fortified cereals, and other greens. Its low oxalate content makes it one of the more efficient green vegetables for iron absorption, even if its total iron content is modest. For people who eat bok choy regularly in stir-fries, soups, or steamed side dishes, those servings add up over the course of a week.
Bok choy also brings calcium, potassium, and vitamins A, C, and K to the table, all with very few calories. So while it’s not the vegetable you’d single out as an iron supplement, it’s one of the better all-around nutrient packages among leafy greens, and its iron is more bioavailable than what you’d get from many higher-iron alternatives.