Food fortification safety

Food fortification and designer foods specially formulated to prevent chronic diseases are enthusiastically advocated by the vitamin industry and its proponents (16). Unrestrained vitamin fortification added to unrestrained supplementation with these substances has now in some countries led to the potential for rather high cumulative amounts of intake in some populations. There is growing concern about the safety of chronically high doses of some of these, where the therapeutic margin between deficiency and toxicity may not be all that wide (15,17-19). 

Food fortification and supplementation Technolr cal, safety and regulatory aspects... 

The fortification of these milk products with vitamin A is endorsed by the American Medical Association, with the concurrence of the Food and Nutrition Board, National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council and the Expert Panel on Food Safety and Nutrition of the Institute of Food Technologists (AMA 1982). The fortification of dried skim milk with vitamin A is viewed by the World Health Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization (WHO 1977) as an important measure to combat vitamin A deficiency in developing countries, where 20,000 to 100,000 children yearly develop blindness from a lack of vitamin A in their diets (DeLuca et al. 1979). 

At the request of the Codex Committee on Food Additives and Contaminants at its thirty-eighth session (Codex Alimentarius Commission, 2006), the Committee re-evaluated the safety of sodium iron(lll) ethyienediaminetetraacetic acid trihydrate (in short, sodium iron EDTA) as to its use for iron fortification. 

Naturally occurring antinutrients and food toxicants, and those formed during food processing, adversely affect the nutritional quality and safety of foods. Because of the need to improve food quality and safety by plant breeding, fortification with appropriate nutrients, and processing methods, and because of the growing concern about possible direct relationships between diet and diseases, research is needed to ... 

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