Food nutrition enhancer, also called food nutritional fortifier, refers to natural or synthetic nutrients added to food in order to increase its nutritional content. It can not only supplements people's daily nutritional intake, but also has a positive effect on disease prevention and control. The food nutrition enhancers can be divided into four main categories as following.
Vitamins
Vitamins are essential nutrients for maintaining normal physiological functions and promoting various metabolic processes in the human body. There are two main types of vitamins: fat-soluble and water-soluble. Vitamin deficiency can be avoided through external intake, and food intake is a convenient and effective way to do this. As one of the first food nutritional fortifiers, vitamins are currently one of the most widely used categories worldwide.
Fat-soluble vitamins include vitamins A, D, E, and K. Among them, vitamin A and vitamin D are more commonly used as food nutrition enhancers. Natural vitamin A oil, vitamin A acetate, palmitate, and natural and synthetic beta-carotene are most commonly used for food fortification. Vitamin D is a steroid derivative. There are 6 compounds in the VD family, among which VD2 and VD3 are more commonly used as food nutrition enhancers. The most commonly used for food nutrition fortification are purified VD2 and VD3 crystals.
The most commonly used water-soluble vitamin in food nutrition fortification is VC (ascorbic acid). However, ascorbic acid is unstable and easily affected by temperature and pH, while magnesium ascorbyl phosphate is used as VC nutrition enhancer due to its stronger stability agent. In addition, the VB family (thiamine, riboflavin, cobalamin, and folic acid) can also be used for nutritional fortification of food.
Minerals
Minerals play an influential role in the life cycle of the human body and are indispensable for constituting body tissues and maintaining normal physiological activities. However, since minerals cannot be synthesized in vivo, they can only be obtained through dietary supplements. As natural foods often lack the minerals the body needs, fortification can be performed by adding certain minerals to foods. Mineral fortifiers commonly used in foods include three minerals (calcium, magnesium, phosphorus) and six trace minerals (copper, fluorine, iodine, iron, manganese, zinc).
Zinc is one of the essential trace elements for the human body, and it is also one of the most easily deficient elements. Zinc can participate in the synthesis of more than 200 zinc-containing metalloenzymes and protein nucleic acids in the human body, maintain the structure and function of cell membranes, and also play an important role in the immune system. Zinc compounds used for food fortification include zinc gluconate, zinc lactate, zinc acetate, and trizinc dicitrate.
Amino Acids
Amino acids are the basic units of biological protein, and one of the most fundamental substances of life activities, with various special biological functions. The main amino acids used for food fortification include lysine, tryptophan, methionine and threonine.
Among the eight essential amino acids, L-lysine is the most important and has a higher daily requirement for the human body. It has various functions such as regulating the body's internal metabolic balance, enhancing the body's immunity, and promoting the growth and development of children. For people who mainly eat plant-based foods, it is necessary to consume lysine-fortified foods.
Other Nutritional Fortifiers
In addition to vitamins, minerals, and amino acids, there are many other nutrients used for food fortification, including docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), oligosaccharides, dietary fiber, prebiotics, lecithin, nucleotides, choline, and L-carnitine.
L-carnitine is also known as levocarnitine and vitamin BT. It is a novel type of food nutrition enhancer. The salts of L-carnitine, such as L-carnitine-L-tartrate, L-carnitine hydrochloride, and acetyl-L-carnitine can be used for food nutrition fortification. L-carnitine is mainly used in the nutritional fortification of infant food and plays an important role in the oxidation process of fat.
As a result of their pertinence and safety, food nutritional fortifiers have already contributed to improving human nutrition. And they will become increasingly important in the field of food processing in the future.
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