How much do you know about food nutritional fortifiers

Nutritional fortifiers refer to natural or synthetic nutrients and other nutrients added to foods in order to increase the nutritional content (value) of foods
.
Many consumers have heard about fortifiers or fortified foods in their daily lives, but don't know much about
them.
Some consumers think that foods with fortifiers are more nutritious, some consumers think that it is better to eat raw food, and some consumers think that everyone needs to eat fortified foods.
.
.
What are the facts?

What is a food nutritional fortifier

Food nutritional fortifiers refer to natural or synthetic food additives
that belong to the scope of natural nutrients added to foods to enhance nutrients.
Commonly used nutritional fortifiers include amino acids and nitrogenous compounds, such as protein, lysine, vitamins and minerals
such as calcium, iron, and zinc.
Some other nutrients such as taurine, L-carnitine, fructooligosaccharides, etc.
can also be used as nutritional fortifiers
.

Generally speaking, the following two situations need to use nutritional fortifiers: one is to make up for the loss of natural foods in the processing process to achieve the nutritional value
of natural foods.
For example, during the processing of rice and flour, vitamins and minerals are lost, which can be compensated for by adding nutrients
.
Second, some ingredients naturally lack certain nutrients, such as the lack of lysine in flour, etc.
, which can be made up for by adding certain nutrients
.

What are fortified foods

Under the guidance of modern nutrition science, according to the nutritional deficiencies and nutritional needs of different regions and different populations, and in order to make up for the loss of nutrients caused by normal processing and storage of food, one or more micronutrients or other nutrients are selectively added to food to improve its nutritional value, and this fortified food is called fortified food
.

Common fortified foods include fortified flour, fortified cooking oil, fortified soy sauce, children's complementary foods, milk and dairy products, beverages, canned food and confectionery
.

Fortified foods should first comply with scientific principles
.
According to GB14880-2012 "National Food Safety Standard for the Use of Food Nutritional Fortifiers", the use of nutritional fortifiers should not lead to excessive or unbalanced intake of nutrients and other nutrients after consumption, should not lead to abnormal metabolism of any nutrients and other nutrients, and at the same time, should be able to ensure the stability of quality under specific storage, transportation and eating conditions, and should not lead to obvious adverse changes
in the general characteristics of food such as color, taste, smell, cooking characteristics, etc.

Whether fortified foods are essential for everyone

Fortified foods are not essential for everyone
.
If people can ensure food diversity and dietary balance, there is no need to deliberately choose fortified foods
.

In general, vegetarian or special occupational groups can choose appropriate nutritional fortified foods
.
The human body's demand for nutrients in some cases will increase, and the nutrients obtained from the daily diet may not be able to meet the demand, such as vegetarians, because there is no meat, eggs, milk, etc.
in the diet, it is easy to lead to vitamin B12 deficiency, and the nutritional needs
of the human body can be met through fortified foods.
For people with iron deficiency anemia, fortified foods
with added iron can be consumed.

In addition, some people are at a special stage of life, such as infants, and need to meet their nutritional needs
through fortified nutritional foods.
Commercially available infant formula contains iron, calcium, etc.
, because milk powder alone cannot meet the needs of
infant growth and development.

In some special cases, people can not consume some pure natural foods, such as astronauts, field workers, etc.
, can also choose nutritional fortified foods to avoid temporary nutritional deficiency symptoms
.

Then there is when malnutrition is easy to lead to some problems, it is necessary to supplement nutritional fortified foods
.
If the food intake of people who lose weight is reduced than usual, some people lose weight with only about half of the usual amount of food, which will lead to insufficient supply of vitamins, minerals and proteins, and people who do not have professional nutrition knowledge are difficult to achieve a balance of nutrition with less food, in this case, fortified foods are a good choice
.

(Edited by Li Chuang)