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Received: 7 July 2013
Received in revised form: 1 December 2014
Accepted: 9 December 2014
Keywords
Iron
Tea
Milk
In vitro
Dialyzability
Abstract
Indian tea preparation involves addition of milk to brewed black tea. It is a well-known fact that individually both tea polyphenols and milk proteins inhibit iron absorption by forming complexes with dietary iron, rendering it insoluble in the gut. However, when present in combination these dietary components could have an ambiguous effect of either increasing the available iron by binding each other or decreasing iron availability by showing additive inhibitory effect. Our objective was to investigate effect of milk addition to tea on iron bioavailability using in vitro digestion method. Treatments namely, tea only (A), tea+milk (B) and milk only (C), were mixed with FeCl3 to yield solutions that are 5 mM in iron. These solutions were subjected to simulated gastrointestinal digestion and were further estimated for percent dialyzability and solubility of iron using ferrozine as indicator. Results obtained showed that dialyzable iron in the treatment of tea with milk was lowest (19.83 ± 1.71% of total iron in the treatment) compared to treatment of tea only (30.8 ± 2.03%) and milk only (24.72 ± 3.73%). Our results suggest that tea and milk when taken together could have higher deleterious effect on iron availability than taken individually, and this might be a possible factor contributing to the prevailing iron deficiency throughout the country.
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Introduction
Iron deficiency is one of the major causes for morbidity and mortality in India (Nair and Iyenger, 2009). Every year around 22,000 people, mainly pregnant women, die from severe anemia (National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau (NNMB), 2003). According to the National Family Health Survey (Arnold et al., 2009), 70-80% in children (6 to 59 months), 90% of adolescent girls, 55% of women, 70% of pregnant women, and 24% of adult men are suffering from anemia in the country (IIPS, 2007 and Arnold et al., 2009). Iron deficiency causes a wide range of abnormalities such as iron deficiency anemia, cognitive dysfunction in young children, growth and development retardation, gastrointestinal tract abnormalities, and miscellaneous disease like pica and thrombocytosis. The primary reason for this deficiency is the presence of...