Fortification of milk and dairy products withminerals and vitamins

Vitamins and minerals are essential in assuring human health at all stages of life. Iodine, iron,vitamin A, and zinc are identified as some of the most common nutrient deficiencies in theworld. To overcome this problem, fortification of foods that are consumed on a daily basis arestrongly advisable. In practice, the choice of any combination of food vehicle and fortificant ismost important. Common food vehicles that can be fortified with vitamins and minerals includewheat and wheat products, corn, rice, milk and dairy products, vegetable oils, salt, sugar,breakfast cereals, and condiments. Milk and dairy products are good sources of high-qualityprotein and calcium. Nutritionists recommend milk consumption in all societies and for all agegroups, especially children and the elderly, therefore they can serve as good vehicles infortification program.Liquid milk and dairy products are systematically, either mandatorily or voluntarily, fortifiedwith Vitamins (especially D) and minerals (calcium and iron are more common) in somecountries but their overall contribution to micronutrient intake is not fully understood. Theselection of proper nutrient compound, technical issues, impact of industrial processing andstorage, and cross effect of different micronutrient (when adding two or more) with each otherand with dairy compound, must be considered when milk and dairy products are fortified.Moreover, some micronutrient compound such as iron showed undesirable effects on thevehicle sensory properties (including, taste, odor, and color) and lipid oxidation. Therefore,microencapsulation of nutrient compounds is a promising method to overcome mentionedproblems. For example impaired taste and oxidative potential of many iron salts can be reducedby means of microencapsulation. In general, in the case of food fortification with vitamins, theirsolubility in food vehicle and heir stability in presence of heat, humidity and oxygen are mostchallenging issues while, when dairy products are fortified with minerals, the challengingaspects are the effect of minerals on sensory and physicochemical properties of fortified foodand the bioavailability of mineral compound. Therefore guidelines and code of practices haveto be designed to help the manufacturers concerning proper fortification of fluid milk and dairyproducts with vitamins and minerals. It must be considered that to ensure proper fortificationof dairy products, the enforcement of product monitoring, high tech equipment, and laboratorytesting are needed.

کلیدواژه ها:

Fortification ، Milk ، Dairy products ، Minerals ، Vitamins