Table salt, fortified

In 1982 an application was received by the National Board of Health for an authorization to place table salt fortified with iodine on the market. As food policies were that vitamins and minerals should not be added to food without documentation of a need for this, no authorization was given. However, it was legal to add iodine (mostly 150 pg) to vitamin-plus-mineral tablets, and such supplements were (and are) taken by a considerable part of the population (Knudsen et aL, 2002d). 

Certain food additives contain iodine. For example, potassium iodate and calcium iodate are components of preparations for stabilising dough. The synthetic red food colouring erythrosine contains 58% iodine (fouriodineatomsinthemolecule).Therefore, foods coloured using this pigment have a higher iodine content, but the bioavailability of erythrosine iodine is low (2-5%). The content of iodine in foods and meals may also increase with the use of table salt fortified with iodine (as sodium iodide or sodium iodate). The iodine concentration in table salt is 20-50 mg/kg. 

Nutrients. In the United Slates, foods are either restored, enriched, or fortified with nutrients. The enrichment program followed in the United States is (I) the enrichment of Hour, bread, and degerminated and while rice using thiamin, C12H11N5O4S, riboflavin. CiiHjnNrNaOgP. niacin, CsHsN02. and iron (2) the retention or restoration of thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, and iron in processed food cereals (3) the addition of vitamin D to milk, fluid skimmed milk, and nonfat dry milk (4) the addition of vitamin A, CjnH.rnG, to margarine, fluid skimmed milk, and nonfat dry milk (5) the addition of iodine to table salt and (6) the addition of fluoride to areas in which the water supply has a low fluoride content. 

Iodi2ed salt is the most important source of iodine worldwide, and is also the agreed strategy for achieving iodine sufficiency (WHO/UNICEF/ICCIDD, 2001). Although Norway has never had mandatory iodization of salt, some brands of table salt are fortified with iodine, and regulations permit the addition of 5 pg of iodine per gram of NaCl (Ministry of Health, 2002). Industrial salt used in food production is not supplemented with iodine (Frey, 1986). 

Tables W-11, W-12, W-13, and W-14 show the standards for enriching flour, self-rising flour, macaroni products, and enriched bread, buns, and rolls. Calcium and vitamin D are permitted as optional additions to flour and bread, in the amounts specified. At about the same time that the flour enrichment program got underway (1941), iodine was added to table salt to prevent goiter, and vitamin D was added to milk to prevent rickets (Since most milk is now fortified with vitamin D, it is seldom added to bakery foods).

Table IV presents the RBV for the iron of three breakfast cereals not fortified with iron. The two ready-to-eat cereals were sources of highly bioavailable iron, but the instant cereal was significantly lower in bioavailability than the reference salt. We have not studied the chemical nature of iron in commercially available wheat based foods. The iron that remains in the residue of 1.2 M ammonium acetate extracted wheat bran was only 71 as bioavailable as the extracted monoferric phytate (6j, but the iron of enzymatically dephytinized wheat bran, which may be complexed with amino acids, is highly bioavailable (11).

A few trials have suggested that selenium supplementation may have a protective effect on liver cancer in high-risk groups living in low-selenium areas. The provision of selenium-fortified salt to a town in Qidong, China, with high rates of primary liver cancer, reduced the incidence of this cancer by 35% compared with towns that did not receive this intervention (Table 3). Trials have also demonstrated the incidence of liver cancer to be... 

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