By Eberechi Obinagwam
Food Fortification is simply a deliberate addition of nutrients to food.The deliberate addition is to increase the content of an essential micro-nutrient in a food that is; the vitamins and minerals in a food.
We have breakfast cereals, bread, flour, margarine, salt, snack bars, dairy and milk and plant-based milk alternatives, juices, and baby foods as examples of commonly fortified foods.
Bio-fortification includes breeding crops to increase their nutritional value, which can include both conventional selective breeding, and modern genetic modification.
Synthetic fortification involves addition of pro-biotic bacteria to foods, while commercial and Industrial fortification involves consumables like flour, rice, oils.
Fortified foods are specified on the packaging. Companies often write them out while listing the ingredients. Most times, it comes with a sign, like the one of salt that has a picture of a big broad eye showing that it has iodine.
Aside buying fortified foods, one can also fortify foods at home by mashing avocado and mix into sauces, boil rice in full fat milk, etc just to stay healthy
Food is a source of vitamin and minerals if it has at least 5 per cent of the NRV, nutritional Values and it is said that good nutrition is not only important for physical health, but also for mental and environmental well-being. And there is no way you can discuss food fortification without mentioning nutrition.
In the world indexes of malnutrition, Nigeria has the 2nd highest rate of malnutrition with over 10m children suffering from stunted growth. Over 40m Nigerians are food insecure, with many lacking access to nutritious food.
Also, report from UNICEF has it that nutrition education is lacking in Nigeria leading to a lack of knowledge about healthy eating habits. They also identified COVID 19, conflict in Ukraine and severe climate change as factors that have raised the cost of nutritious food, making more people vulnerable to malnutrition.
With an increasing figure of malnutrition in Nigeria, food Fortification has been proven to be an effective way of curbing malnutrition.
Ever since the campaign for food fortification started, there have been fortification of flour with iron, fortication of salt with iodine, milk with vitamin D, vegetable oil with vitamin A.
According to a nutritionist, Dr. Patricia Ukegbu, with an increasing rate of malnutrition, Nigeria can do better if the government implements policies that will see that manufactures fortify their foods before selling them to the market. “Government agencies responsible for food fortification must do a proper survey before fortifying to know whether the nutrient is deficient among the population. And the fortified food must be reachable, available and affordable”
to work on the increasing rate of malnutrition in Nigeria, it is important that manufacturers fortify foods before selling them in the market.”
Ukaegbu, who is also a lecturer at the Michael Okpara University stated this in a three day capacity building workshop on Food Fortification and workforce nutrition in Nigeria organised by Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) in partnership with Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) through The Third-Party Advocacy Campaign (TPAC) recently in Lagos.
She said International agancies has noted that food fortification is the key to reducing malnutrition in Nigeria, explaining that food fortification has always been there, but the group wants to amplify it.
According to her, a lot of development partners are working to ensure that foods supply chain in Nigeria are fortified so that when one goes to the market to purchase them, he or she will be satisfied.
Also, Work Fortification Nutrition project Lead, Lovely Agbor Gabriel who represented the president, CISLAC, Auwal Musa at the workshop said the training was organised to bridge the knowledge gap in the area of food fortification and workforce nutrition.
“People are used to general nutrition about their health. The issue that informed the intervention is poor awareness, lack of compliance and poor implementation. We want people to be aware, on how it is being done, and to improve the food fortification status in Nigeria.
“We want government to use their various arms to increase the food fortification awareness in Nigeria so that people will know the importance and demand for it.”
According to her, if people do not know about food fortification, they won’t demand for it.
She said: “The remedy of food defency is to buy food that are fortified. It is cheaper than buying suplimemts, It’s cheaper than being sick and going to treat. We want the government to do the talk, put in sanctions that will make food chain suppliers to fortify their product and we want the food suppliers to adhere to governments instructions for the wellbeing of the country,” she said.
