Fortified Food Micronutrients on the Frontline

A lack of micronutrients, such as Zinc, Iron and Iodine, has become such a severe problem in the developing world that the 2008 Copenhagen Consensus listed the issue as the top priority to be solved.

As a result of iron deficiencies, in excess of 1.6bn people worldwide are anaemic and an estimated 1.9bn people worldwide suffer from inadequate levels of iodine in their diet. While an estimated 10% of the world’s population suffer from zinc deficiencies, the effects of a lack of vitamin A are more serious. Out of the 190m estimated pre-school children that suffer from vitamin A deficiency, in excess of 350,000 go blind each year.

As a result, a number of potential solutions were vetted by the Copenhagen Consensus. While it was deemed unfeasible to ensure global access to a balanced diet, micronutrient fortification was deemed preferable over the pharmaceutical supplementation of micronutrients, either through medications of injections.

Micronutrient fortification, which includes increasing the nutrients within staple food ingredients such as salt, deliver the key nutrients to the population without changes in food consumption patterns, and a number of companies are now beginning to launch their own products in this field.

Nestlé milk and Maggi magic

Food producer Nestlé are amongst a number of companies working towards producing fortified foodstuffs in order to help address micronutrient malnutrition in the developing world.

Boasting the world’s largest private nutrition and food research capability, Nestlé view increasing nutritional awareness and the desire for improved health as a means of driving consumer choice.

As a result, Nestlé have been able to produce a number of products fortified with micronutrients. The company produces a range of dairy products, mainly milk, which can be infused with specific nutrients in correlation to an area’s specific needs. Powdered milks with added iron, vitamin A and zinc can be produced and then distributed where required.

The company also produce Maggi cubes, a bouillon cube that is produced using iodine enriched salt, to combat iodine deficiency, particularly in West African nations where such deficiencies are rife.

Salt for health, not taste

Enhancing on Nestlé’s method of additives into food staples, these additives can now be enhanced to deliver increasing amounts of micronutrients. Double fortified salt, co-developed by Micronutrient Initiative, can deliver both iodine and iron at low costs and is already being used widely within the Tamil Nadu state of India.

According to Micronutrient Initiative President Venkatesh Mannar, “Salt is cheap and available in every marketplace in the world and has been a very successful vehicle for delivering iodine to billions around the world,” says Mannar.

“With this new technology, salt producers can use the same infrastructure without needing individual compliance to double fortify salt with iron and iodine to help alleviate iron and iodine deficiencies, which have devastating and permanent effects.”

While double fortified salt has proven to be affective in India, Mannar believes that micronutrient fortification can be adapted to a variety of staple foods at little cost and with huge benefits. “Fortifying staple foods can be an easy and cost-effective way to deliver essential vitamins and minerals to an entire population,” says Mannar. “It often takes only a very simple modification to existing milling or processing machinery and the micronutrient premix is very inexpensive. Well-implemented food fortification programs can have large health and development payoffs.”

Flour power

By adopting the same methods used to produce double fortified salt, another food staple that can act as a delivery vehicle for micronutrients is flour. Flour fortification involves very much the same processes, infusing zinc, folic acid and vitamin A with flour that can then be used in food production.

Interflour, a flour milling company with mills located across Asia, utilise these methods in their fortified flour production as a means of supporting initiatives put in place by the Vietnam government and UNICEF in order to ease troubles affecting women and children who are anaemic through iron deficiency.

Interflour charges no extra for this fortification and provides free flour to the National Institute of Nutrition in Hanoi, which is currently studying the effects of this micronutrient fortification in women of child bearing age which, in time, could lead to the mandatory fortification of flour used in Vietnam.

Is the future golden?

Aside from micronutrient fortification, a number of other methods have been put forward as a means to solve the problem of malnutrition.

Golden rice, a variety of genetically modified rice, has spent years in development and could finally reach the market in 2012. Using genetic modification, the edible germ of the rice plant is biosynthesized in order to contain more beta-carotene, an active ingredient in the production of vitamin A.

Details of the rice were first published in the Science journal in 2000, although a variant manufactured in 2005, entitled Golden Rice 2, was found to contain 23 times more beta-carotene than its predecessor and has since been cited as a potential cure for vitamin A deficiencies in the developing world.

Developers have claimed that, upon approval by national regulatory bodies, it will be made available to smallholders free of charge for growth in countries affected by vitamin A deficiencies. However, this hasn’t stopped the rice from earning its critics.

Doubts have been expressed over the speed of beta-carotene degradation once the plant has been harvested and exactly how much would remain after cooking. Greenpeace has also expressed concern over the use of Golden Rice as a “Trojan Horse”, designed to open the doors to widespread approval of genetically modified foods.