Nutritional enrichment and fortification. What they mean, what they do, and why they matter.
Let’s start with a simple definition, as both words have a somewhat unfortunate science sci-fi ring to them…
Enrichment means replacing any micronutrients that were originally present in the food, but were destroyed or removed during processing.
Example. The milling process used to make some breads removes much of the vitamin B and fibre originally found in the wholegrain. As a result, manufacturers often end up adding vitamins B1, B2 and B3 back into the mix later on during the manufacturing process.
Fortification is the process of adding extra or new micronutrients to the food, beyond what it originally contained.
Example. Breakfast cereals are often fortified with vitamin D. While wheat and grains are not a good source of vitamin D in their natural state (oily fish, liver, and dairy are the best dietary sources of D) in the UK the vitamin D added to breakfast cereals contributes approximately 12 – 18% of most people’s daily intake of this essential vitamin according to the government’s last National Diet and Nutrition Survey.
The different types of fortification
Fortification is carried out with the aim of increasing consumers’ nutrient intake, and can be either targeted (so specifically meant for a certain sector of the population at risk of deficiency, like pregnant women and folic acid), or aimed more widely at an entire national population. This latter type of fortification is known as ‘mass’ or ‘universal’ fortification and usually involves a basic food stuff that most people in a country will use every day. Like iodised salt for example.
There’s also ‘market driven fortification’, which is where fortification programmes are driven predominantly by food and drink companies, rather than the government - although this still happens within the limits of legislative regulations.
And what’s all this about bio fortification?
This is the technical process of fortifying crops with added nutrients while they’re still in the ground, and before they’re processed. There are three main ways of doing this:
1. Agro biofortification. Clue’s in the name here, as this is very much about the agricultural processes around certain crops. So spraying rice crops with zinc, or improving the soil quality by adding certain minerals are all examples of agro biofortification.
2. Breeding and selection. Not all that different to what farmers have been doing for centuries, this is the process whereby the gene pool of certain crops are screened to see which have a higher nutrient density. These then become the ‘chosen ones’ as it were, used to breed the next generation.
3. Genetic modification. The one most people in the West immediately think of. This is where biotechnology is used to enhance the nutrient density of a food, usually by adding plant genes or bacteria.
What should we think about all this?
I could quite literally write a book on this topic, but it’s probably enough to say that there are many different views and opinions out there on the subject!
Where enrichment is concerned, personally I always think this seems a bit of a topsy-turvy way of doing things. Eating more wholegrains is beneficial from a number of different perspectives, so where you can it’s often a good idea to choose wholegrain over refined flour products – even if just for the extra fibre, and not the vitamins you’ll still get from enriched products.
When it comes to fortification, certainly GM crops and tabloid reporting of ‘franken-foods’ have muddied the waters here. With an estimated 2 billion people suffering from hidden hunger and malnutrition globally, and biodiversity on a seemingly never ending downward trend, fortification of crops could prove a real game changer in terms of boosting micronutrient levels globally.
What does the future look like?
Fortification is proving particularly important for low and middle-income countries, where people are often very dependent on just one or two staple foods. For example 70% of food intake in sub-Saharan Africa comes from staple foods like cassava or millet. Swapping from white to yellow cassava for example could provide children with 50% of their RDA for vitamin A, and so programmes are already underway in countries like Nigeria to encourage farmers to grow the selectively-bred yellow cassava strains.
Contrary to much of the reporting, it’s important to note it’s not the Wild West out there. Any type of fortification involves stringent political and regulatory legislation, in addition to constant monitoring of effects. While there are valid debates to be had (and that should be had) about the problem of free will vs. public health initiatives for the greater good, it’s interesting to see how different countries take different stances here. Europe for example remains one of the few territorial blocks yet to embrace salt iodization programmes - no doubt partly due to long-held European notions of liberty and individual freedom over the state - and this is likely to continue.
Perhaps the most important point to consider as part of the fortification conversation, is the potential for accidental knock-on effects on nearby ecological systems, but this is true for most agricultural and industrial activities us humans get up to these days.
Certainly the debate is one that looks set to continue, with the WHO stating that further research and trials of crop biofortification are needed, so interesting times are definitely ahead here…
References
https://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/ndns-ni-full-report.pdf
http://www.harvestplus.org/about/our-mission
http://www.who.int/elena/titles/biofortification/en/
https://www.edx.org/course/nutrition-health-micronutrients-wageningenx-nutr102x
https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/news/fortified-food-boost-african-diets