Dietary Diversity

Along with feeding your iguana the most nutritious vegetables, it is important to feed a variety of vegetables. This serves several functions. First of all, it will help stimulate appetite. No person wants to eat the same few foods all the time, and no iguana does either. Additionally, it is closer to what an iguana would experience in the wild. In the rainforest habitat of an iguana, there are thousands of species of plants that an iguana might consume, so it makes sense to include as many types as possible in captivity. Feeding your iguana a wide variety provides it with many different phytonutrients (chemicals plants contain that are not essential in the diet but do seem to provide so me health benefits; the cancer-fighting lycopenes in tomatoes are one example), which are attracting a lot of interest in the human nutritionist community at the momento Lastly-and perhaps most importantly-by including a wide variety of vegetables in the diet you minimize the possibility that the amount of any nutrient is too low. Feeding the most diverse foodstuffs you can helps ensure that your iguana will not lack any nutrients in his diet.

An iguana's diet can be broken down to a few major components: greens, other vegetables, fruits, and other items. We'lllook at each component in detail. In each section, there will be a number of examples of specific items that can be fed to an iguana, and we'll note which ones are the best. Keep in mind that iguana nutrition is not an exact science, and future studies may result in changes as to what types of plants are good or bad for these lizards.