Getting enough vitamins in your day can be tricky, but a new technique could help fortify everyday foods to tackle deficiencies. Scientists at MIT added vitamin A, encased in polymer capsules, to ingredients like flour and found that it survived storage and cooking to deliver the nutrient in useful amounts to the body.
Vitamin A deficiency can lead to issues with the immune system and potentially cause blindness in children. While it can be added to foods, it doesn’t last as long in a loose form, meaning that by the time someone eats it the benefits are negligible. The MIT team set out to develop a way to protect the vitamin long enough to make it a worthwhile additive.
“Vitamin A is a very important micronutrient, but it’s an unstable molecule,” said Ana Jaklenec, senior author of the study. “We wanted to see if our encapsulated vitamin A could fortify a food vehicle like bouillon cubes or flour, throughout storage and cooking, and whether the vitamin A could remain biologically active and be absorbed.”
The key to the idea is a polymer called BMC, which the team has experimented with in the past for encapsulating nutrients. It’s already approved by the FDA for use in coating drugs and supplements, and is regarded as safe.
The team mixed vitamin A with BMC to form particles 100 to 200 microns wide, and coated them in starch to keep them from sticking together. In tests, the encapsulated vitamin A survived better than free vitamin A when exposed to intense UV light, high temperatures and boiling water.
Next, the researchers tested how well these particles could be added to food ingredients like flour and bouillon (stock) cubes. The fortified foodstuffs were then stored under extreme conditions – 40 °C (104 °F) and 75% humidity, as might be encountered in some developing countries – and once again, the encapsulated vitamin A remained more stable than other forms.
Protecting the vitamin for longer isn’t much use if the body can’t access it though, so the team then tested how well it was absorbed. In animals given cooked capsules in their food, the researchers found that about 30% of the vitamin A was absorbed. That’s the same as vitamin A that isn’t cooked, and far better than the cooked free vitamin A, of which only 3% was absorbed.
And finally, human tests showed similar results. The researchers cooked the particles into bread and fed that to a sample group of women, monitoring the levels of vitamin A in their blood for 24 hours afterwards. And sure enough, the encapsulated vitamins were absorbed at rates similar to uncooked free vitamin A.
All up, the study indicates that fortifying foods with encapsulated vitamin A can be an effective way to boost a population’s intake, without requiring much in the way of behavioral changes.
“The enhanced stability of vitamin A with our technology can ensure that the vitamin A-fortified food does provide the recommended daily uptake of vitamin A, even after long-term storage in a hot humidified environment, and cooking processes such as boiling or baking,” said Wen Tang, lead author of the study. “People who are suffering from vitamin A deficiency and want to get vitamin A through fortified food will benefit, without changing their daily routines, and without wondering how much vitamin A is still in the food.”
The encapsulation technology has already been licensed to several companies that are currently developing food products fortified with vitamin A and other nutrients.
The research was published in the journal PNAS.
Source: MIT
