There is widespread vitamin and mineral deficiency problem in Tanzania with known deficiencies of at least vitamin A, iron, folate and zinc, resulting in lasting negative consequences especially on maternal health, cognitive development and thus the nation's economic potential. Folate deficiency is associated with significant adverse health effects among women of reproductive age, including a h...

BACKGROUND Micronutrient deficiencies continue to constitute a major burden of disease, particularly in Africa and South Asia. Programs to address micronutrient deficiencies have been increasing in number, type, and scale in recent years, creating an ever-growing need to understand their combined coverage levels, costs, and impacts so as to more effectively combat deficiencies, avoid putting in...

BACKGROUND Mandatory fortification of bread with iodised salt is proposed to address the re-emergence of iodine deficiency in Australia and New Zealand. The impacts of fortification require baseline data of iodine status among vulnerable sectors of the population. OBJECTIVE To assess the iodine status of healthy women and to investigate consumer understanding and attitudes related to the prop...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effect of flour fortification with folic acid on the incidence of neural tube defects (NTDs) in babies. We also report the pattern of NTDs, and we compare it with those reported previously. METHODS All babies who were born with NTDs at King Abdul-Aziz University Hospital (KAUH), Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia between 1997 and 2005 were included in the study. The inc...

BACKGROUND The addition of folic acid to all enriched cereal-grain foods, mandated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), was initiated in January 1998. Although this program was designed such that typical folate intakes would be increased by approximately 100 micro g/d and that the risk of intakes > 1000 micro g/d (the FDA's safe upper limit of daily intake) would be minimal, its actual ef...

Iron deficiency anemia is the most prevalent nutritional deficiency in the world and food fortification is a cost-effective approach to combat it. This paper reviews the food fortification process with micronutrients, with special emphasis on iron and the most critical steps and common difficulties found when implementing a program. The first step is to measure the magnitude of the problem and ...

BACKGROUND Vitamin and mineral deficiencies affect more than two million people worldwide. In 2011, based on recent scientific evidence and the low effectiveness of current strategies, the World Health Organization recommended home fortification of foods with multiple micronutrients in powder (MNP) as a new strategy to prevent and control anaemia during childhood. This systematic review assesse...

One cost-effective strategy for controlling iron deficiency is the fortification of staple foods or condiments with iron. We evaluated the effectiveness of fortifying fish sauce with NaFeEDTA for improving iron status in women of childbearing age in Vietnam in a double-blind intervention with randomization by village. All families in the selected villages were supplied with fish sauce that was ...

The effect of improvement in vitamin A nutriture on biochemical indicators of iron nutrition during national vitamin A fortification of sugar was investigated longitudinally. Four "paired-comparison-subgroups" of preschoolers were studied before fortification (survey I) and, respectively, at 6 months (survey I versus II), at 1 yr (survey I versus III), at 1 1/2 yr (survey I versus IV), and at 2...

The objective of the study was to examine if exposure to extra vitamin D from food fortification was associated with a decrease in the risk of preeclampsia. The study was based on a natural experiment exploring the effect of the abolition of the Danish mandatory vitamin D fortification of margarine in 1985. The effect of the extra vitamin D (1.25μg vitamin D/100 g margarine) was examined by com...