Food Fortification and Supplementation

Technological, Safety and Regulatory Aspects

Peter Berry Ottaway

• Publisher: Woodhead Publishing
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9781845691448
• eBook ISBN:
  9781845694265
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Food Science
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Fortified foods and food supplements remain popular with today's health-conscious consumers and the range of bioactives added to food is increasing. This collection provides a comprehensive summary of the technology of food fortification and supplementation and associated safety and regulatory aspects.The first part covers methods of fortifying foods, not only with vitamins and minerals but also with other nutraceuticals such as polyphenols and polyunsaturated fatty acids. It also includes a discussion of the stability of vitamins in fortified foods and supplements. The second part contains chapters on the analysis of vitamins, fatty acids and other nutraceuticals, as well as a chapter on assessing the bioavailability of nutraceuticals. It concludes with a discussion of regulation and legislation affecting fortified foods and supplements and a chapter on the safety of vitamins and minerals added to foods.Food fortification and supplementation presents current research from leading innovators from around the world. It is an important reference for those working in the food industry. - Provides a comprehensive summary of the technology of food fortification - Examines associated safety and regulatory aspects - Covers methods for fortifying foods with vitamins and minerals and other nutraceuticals

1

Principles of food fortification and supplementation

P. Berry Ottaway Berry Ottaway and Associates Ltd, UK

1.1 Introduction

Food fortification and supplementation with nutrients has been carried out for centuries, often before the scientific rationale became available. There are a number of examples of food fortification from different parts of the globe. In Central Europe during the middle ages, mothers were known to push iron nails into apples, leave them there for a while and then feed the apples to listless or ailing daughters. There are reports as early as 1824 of the indigenous Indian population of Columbia, South America, treating goitre with a specific source of salt which was later found to have a high iodine content. In the making of traditional tortillas in Mexico, the corn was first soaked in lime water, and a pinch of ground limestone was added to the tortilla itself; we now know this was to provide an intake of calcium.¹

One of the first recorded suggestions for the fortification of food was that of Boussingault in 1831, who advocated the iodisation of salt for the reduction of goitre. The first official addition of an iodide to domestic salt started in Switzerland in 1900, and the practice has continued in a number of countries to the present day.

Other foods where micronutrient additions have been officially sanctioned or legally required are margarine and flour. Apparently, only six years after vitamin A (retinol) had been identified, a leading doctor in London wrote to the Chairman of Unilever to the effect that if the company wanted its margarine to resemble butter they would have to add the ‘new-fangled vitamins’. A vitamin A deficiency was reported among children in Denmark in 1917. This was apparently due to Denmark exporting a large proportion of its butter production and replacing it in the home market with margarine. As butter was a major source of vitamin A in the Danish diet, the fortification of margarine with fish liver oils was introduced. The legal requirement for the addition of vitamins A and D to margarine continues in many countries.²

During the Second World War, the United Kingdom introduced legislation making it compulsory to add vitamin B₁ (thiamin), niacin and an approved source of iron to all flour used for cooking or baking. Some flours were also required to have added calcium carbonate. These requirements are still in force over 60 years later.

1.2 Definitions

Whilst the terms ‘fortification’ and ‘supplementation’ are widely used, a number of terms are often used indiscriminately. Some agreement on specific definitions was reached within Codex Alimentarius and this was published in 1987 in the ‘General Principles for the Addition of Essential Nutrients to Foods’.³ Based on these definitions:

• Fortification usually refers to the addition of nutrients to foods from which they were either absent, or present in unimportant amounts. This is carried out because deficiencies or potential deficiencies have been shown in the population. It also includes additions to fulfil the role of another food in the diet. Thus margarine is fortified with vitamin A in many countries to replace that ‘lost’ when margarine is substituted for butter. Vitamin D is added at higher levels than are found in butter as a public health measure, since extra is considered necessary for the population as a whole.

• Restoration is self-evident, involving the replacement, in full or in part, of losses incurred in processing (e.g. loss of B vitamins and iron in milling of cereals to low extraction rates; loss of vitamin C in the preparation of instant potato).
It should be noted that, up to now, restoration has been limited; for example, white bread has thiamin, niacin and iron added back, although other vitamins such as pantothenate, folate, pyridoxine and tocopherol are also partly lost in the milling process. Similarly, fruit juices might have vitamin C added back, but juices also supply folate and thiamin. In some countries, calcium and riboflavin are also added to bread: this is fortification, since wheat contains only small amounts of these two nutrients.

• Enrichment is increasing the level of nutrients present to make the food a ‘richer’ source. Enrichment has frequently been interchanged with restoration and fortification as a general term. However, for labelling purposes the use of the term ‘enriched’ is controlled.

• Standardisation is sometimes used to mean additions to compensate for natural or seasonal variations in nutrient content.

• Substitution is the nutrient addition to a substitute product to the levels found in the food which it is designed to resemble in appearance, texture, flavour and odour and which it is intended to replace partially or completely. An example is the addition of vitamins A and D to fat replacers.

• Supplementation is the supply of nutrients (normally micronutrients) singly or in combination in a quantified dose form. Supplements can take a variety of forms such as tablets, capsules, pastilles, measured amounts of liquid or small sachets of powder.

The term ‘nutrification’ has been occasionally used in the past to mean the addition of nutrients to formulated or fabricated foods which are marketed mainly as meal replacements.

1.3 Food fortification

Food fortification and restoration has, for more than a century, played an important role in helping to achieve specific health policies and ensuring the nutritional health of populations across the world. In addition to the enrichment of salt with iodine and the fortification of margarine and bread mentioned previously, there have been programmes to combat rickets with vitamin D fortified milk; the addition of thiamin (vitamin B₁), niacin and folic acid to cereals to reduce the incidence of beriberi and pellagra; and also the addition of an iron source to cereals to help reduce anaemia.

The fortification of food has the great advantage that it can often be accomplished within the context of an indigenous diet and requires little change to the consumer’s dietary behaviour and food habits. In most cases, effective fortification can be achieved with little or no effect on the organoleptic properties of the food due to the very small amounts of the added micronutrients.

In the developing countries, where there is the greatest need for micronutrient fortification, the vitamins and minerals can be added to the foods or condiments most regularly consumed by a significant proportion of the population at risk. In many cases this is likely to be the staple cereal such as rice, wheat or maize flour, but there have been reports where condiments such as iron-fortified fish sauces and soy sauces have been successfully used in programmes aimed at reducing iron deficiency, mainly in Asia.^4,5

Food fortification can have a positive effect on the health of a population at a very low cost. A report published by UNICEF in 2005 based on an evaluation of 80 developing countries gives a vivid picture of the consequences of micronutrient deficiencies in those countries:⁶

• Iodine deficiency is estimated to have lowered the intellectual capacity of almost all of the nations reviewed by as much as 10 to 15 percentage points.

• Iron deficiency in the 6–24 month age group is impairing the development of approximately 40–60% of the developing world’s children.

• Severe iron deficiency anaemia is responsible for the deaths in pregnancy and childbirth of more than 60 000 young women a year.

• Vitamin A deficiency is compromising the immune systems of approximately 40% of the developing world’s under-five-year-old children, leading to the death of about one million young children each year.

• Folate deficiency is responsible for an estimated 200 000 severe birth defects each year in the 80 countries assessed.

The above examples are not exhaustive but are indicative of the scale of the problem faced by a large proportion of the world’s population. To put it into perspective, over two billion people, or a third of the global population, are at risk of vitamin A, iron or iodine deficiency.⁷

The General Assembly of the United Nations in May 2002 agreed that the key micronutrient deficiencies should be one of the global development goals to be achieved in the first decade of the new millennium. Specifically, the UN targets were for the virtual elimination of iodine deficiency by 2005; the elimination of vitamin A deficiency by 2010 and a reduction of at least 30% of iron deficiency anaemia, also by 2010.⁸

The mandatory fortification programmes needed to achieve these objectives require a political will and commitment at a national level. The scale and severity of micronutrient deficiency is not yet fully appreciated by the politicians, public or press in most nations of the world. The UNICEF report states that ‘the goals will not be achieved, and the impact of vitamin and mineral deficiency will not be substantially reduced without a more ambitious, visionary and systematic commitment to putting known solutions into effect on the same scale as the known problems’. It also points out that progress is only likely to be achieved by dynamic alliances involving governments, the private sector, health and nutrition professionals, academics and researchers, civil society and international agencies.

While some of the more persuasive arguments for food fortification relate to micronutrient deficiencies in developing countries, fortification has a long history of use in the developed countries. Micronutrient addition to breakfast cereals has been a common practice in many countries for decades, as has the addition of vitamin C to fruit juices.

The addition of micronutrients to food can be justified if either a food is generally accepted as being a good source of the nutrient(s) but suffers losses during processing or storage, or if the introduction of a new food concept could be expected to replace an existing food. An example of the restoration of processing losses is the addition of vitamin C to processed potato products and fruit juices.

The second justification is more complex and relates to the potential loss of nutrients as a consequence of the introduction of a replacement food. A good example of this was the widespread replacement of full-cream milk as part of a policy to reduce the intake of fat. The removal of the fat also significantly reduced the amounts of the fat soluble vitamins A and D in the milk, thus removing a common source of these vitamins from the diet.

The introduction of meat substitutes in the form of textured vegetable protein (TVP) caused significant debate in the 1960s and 1970s, with differing national requirements for the addition of vitamins, minerals and specific amino acids to replace those found in meat.

The introduction of the fat-replacer Olestra was another good example of the need for fortification. This was due to some of the fat-soluble vitamins (particularly vitamins A, E and the pro-vitamin carotenoids), present in the intestine at the same time as Olestra, being preferentially dissolved in the Olestra and being lost to the body. In 1996 the Food and Drug Administration in the United States of America granted approval for the limited use of Olestra subject to fortification with fat-soluble vitamins.⁹

A rapidly increasing area of fortification is that of functional foods, where many contain added substances with a physiological or health effect as well as micronutrients, such as the antioxidant vitamins.

However, when considering fortification of a food it must be borne in mind that the range of foods suited to fortification is considerably limited by a number of factors including technological and organoleptic restrictions, cost and consumer expectations.

Properties inherent in the food such as moisture, pH and oxygen permeability can lead to unacceptable taste, appearance and re...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright page
• Contributor contact details
• 1: Principles of food fortification and supplementation
• Part I: Technological aspects
• Part II: Analysis, regulation and safety
• Index