CHAPTER 1
Text and its source

A Dash of Nutrition
By DIANE MARTINDA

The fortification of salt with iodine is a global success story: with two out of three household in the developing world now consuming iodized salt, an estimated 82 million children are protected from thyroid disease and resultant learning disabilities every year. Still, people suffer from a lack of other micronutrients. For years, food scientists have looked for a way to fortify iodized salt to combat iron-deficiency anemia, which affects some two billion people, as well as vitamin A deficiency, which afflicts at least 100 million children in poor countries and is the leading cause of blindness among them. Canadian researchers have now developed practical way to double- and triple- fortify salt, which might also be more acceptable to people than genetically modified foods in tackling malnutrition. Adding iron to iodized salt is a simple idea that has proved difficult to execute. The chemicals are incompatible: when mixed together, iodine vaporizes and iron degrades. After more than a decade, Levente Doisady, a chemical engineer at the University of Toronto, finally solved the problem by borrowing a technique from the food industry referred to as microencapsulation. The process involves spraying iron particles with stearine, a vegetable fat, which creates a protective coat and prevents the iron from reacting with the iodine. Encapsulating the iron, however, was only part of the solution. Diosady’s team also had to change the appearance of the iron particles-which are dark brown and much smaller than salt grains. “The iron can’t look like mice droppings in the salt,” Diosady’s said. “This is important in developing countries where food contamination is a problem.” So to make the iron resemble salt, Diosady first sprays the microscopic iron granules with maltodextrin, a modified food