Encapsulate vitamin A from foods to reduce the risk of blindness
About one-third of the world’s preschool population, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia, suffers from vitamin A deficiency, a deficiency that often leads to blindness. But now some researchers have developed a way to prevent this nutrient from being broken down during cooking or storage. All the details
Vitamin A deficiency is the leading cause of childhood blindness and, in severe cases, can even be fatal. Approximately one third of the world’s population of preschool children suffers from a lack of this nutrient, especially in sub- Saharan Africa and southern Asia.
Now, however, a team of MIT researchers has developed a way to prevent the nutrient from being lost and broken down in processes such as cooking or storage.
The study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the paper’s lead author is former MIT postdoc Wen Tang, now a professor at South China University of Technology.
WHY IS THERE NEED TO WITHHOLD VITAMIN A IN FOOD
The problem with vitamin A, as Ana Jaklenec, a researcher at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research explained, is that it is a very important molecule but unstable to heat, light, humidity and oxidative conditions. Complicating everything is also its poor miscibility with water or with foods such as flour.
“We wanted to see if our encapsulated vitamin A [in a protective polymer, ed ] could fortify a food vehicle such as bouillon cubes or flour, during storage and cooking, and if vitamin A could remain biologically active and be absorbed ”, said Jaklenec.
Indeed, the authors note, it was necessary to address both stability and bioavailability to ensure the efficacy of the experiment.
THE EXPERIMENT
In a small clinical study, researchers showed that when people ate bread enriched with encapsulated vitamin A, the bioavailability of the nutrient was similar to that of vitamin A consumed alone.
“This study is very exciting for our team because it demonstrates that everything we’ve done in test tubes and on animals works safely and effectively in humans,” said Robert Langer, a professor at the David H. Koch Institute at MIT and a member of the Koch Institute, hoping that this new technology could “one day help millions, if not billions, of people in the developing world”.
THE FOOD FORTIFICATION AND THE ENCAPSULATION OF VITAMIN A
Food fortification, the scholars explain, is in fact an effective strategy for tackling vitamin A deficiency, which is the main cause of childhood blindness and significantly increases mortality from serious infections.
In the study, researchers have developed a vitamin A encapsulation technology that provides effective protection during storage and cooking and is bioavailable to humans.
That technology has been licensed to two companies who hope to use it in food products.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/incapsulare-la-vitamina-a-degli-alimenti-per-ridurre-il-rischio-di-cecita/ on Fri, 16 Dec 2022 06:41:14 +0000.