A new way of fortifying flour with iron helps combat anaemia in developing countries through food.
Researchers from Wageningen University, Unilever and Akzo Nobel will be making this known in the authoritative scientific journal, The Lancet, this week. Together with colleagues from the Kenya Medical Research Institute, they elaborate on an earlier finding in which iron is piloted through the acid stomach ‘in a jacket’.
In developing countries, half of all young children suffer from anaemia, often as a result of iron-deficiency. The cause is a one-sided diet based mainly on grains. These contain phytates, substances which bind the nutrient iron from plant sources as insoluble salts. As the iron-binding phytates are not broken down in the gastrointestinal tract, the body absorbs only 5% of all the iron in plant food. The rest is excreted by the body.
Iron-deficiency can be combated relatively inexpensively by adding iron to foodstuffs. Maize and wheat are ideal for this; large population groups consume these types of flours in large quantities throughout the year. International efforts (including those of the World Health Organization and Unicef) to reinforce flour with iron are beginning to bear fruit. In 1990 only the United States and Canada reinforced their flour with iron; now 49 countries are doing the same, including Nigeria and South Africa, countries of influence in Africa.
In most countries fortification is by adding almost pure iron powder. This is prepared by treating iron oxides with hydrogen or carbon monoxide at high temperatures, or by a process in which iron is produced electrolytically from iron sulphate. The product is then ground into a very fine powder.
The researchers from Wageningen University and from Unilever suspected, however, that this iron powder would not be effective because it also binds with the phytates. So they used iron that Akzo Nobel had chemically ‘wrapped’ in an organic ‘jacket’ made of the compound EDTA. The iron-EDTA (chemical formula NaFeEDTA.3H2O) protects the iron, so that it is not able to bind with the phytates. The iron 'in a jacket' which is consumed with the food remains bound in the acid conditions in the stomach. It becomes available for absorption by the intestinal cells in less acid conditions, like that of the small intestine.