manual of methods for determining micronutrients in fortified foods

I. Introduction
Food fortification is one of the nutritional interventions used to improve the dietetic intake of
micronutrients by the population. Typical foods fortified around the world are cereal flours, mainly
wheat and maize flours, pasta and noodles, milk, oil and margarines, among others.
Wheat flour fortification is carried out in many countries around the world to provide vitamins and
minerals through bread, pasta and other baking goods. The Palestinian Wheat Flour Fortification
Standard issued in 2005 establishes that wheat flour must be fortified with iron, zinc, vitamin A,
vitamin D, thiamin (B 1
), riboflavin (B 2
), niacin (B 3
), pyridoxine (B 6
), folic acid (B 9
) and vitamin B 12
.
The micronutrient formulation for wheat flour in other countries usually includes only iron, thiamin,
riboflavin, niacin and folic acid.
Food industry plays an essential role in food fortification, since the food plants and, in this case, wheat
mills are responsible to add the minerals and vitamins premix to the flour in the adequate amounts to
comply with the requirements indicated in the Standard. On the other hand, the Ministry of Health
verifies that the Standard requirements are being complied, through inspection and sampling. Samples
are analyzed in the Central Public Health Laboratory (CPHL) and reports indicate whether the samples
complied with the Standard.
Vitamins analysis is expensive, because the procedures are long, require sophisticated equipment,
reagents and materials, and skilled and trained personnel. Iron analysis is cheaper compared to vitamin
analysis and this micronutrient is usually used as “Indicator” of compliance for fortification taking into
account that the same premix contains all the vitamins and minerals. However, analyzing vitamins is
important to confirm compliance with the standard and not only with iron. This is especially important
for flour imported from Israel and other countries, where wheat flour fortification is not mandatory or the
micronutrient formulation does not include all the micronutrients specified in the Palestinian Standard.
Furthermore, it is important to test the flour and not only the micronutrient premix with the purpose of
verifying that indeed the right premix is being used for the fortification of the flour.
This Manual presents the methods applied in the Central Public Health Laboratory for the analysis of
wheat flour and fortified foods. Although vitamin analysis is not applied routinely due to the cost, it may
be applied periodically to random samples. Moreover, these methods are important for completing and
updating food composition tables based on unique Palestinian dishes.
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