Iron Bioavailability from African Meals with Rice, Cassava, or Plantain Forming the Staple Food

Abstract

Iron absorption from three typical Central African meals was measured in 15 Zairian volunteers by use of the extrinsic tag technique with ⁵⁹Fe and ⁵⁵Fe. Meals were prepared in Zaire under realistic conditions from locally grown foods. Two of them were meals (based on rice or cassava as the staple food) usually eaten by a large fraction of the population in the Kinshasa area and one (based on plantain as the staple food) was eaten especially during periods of festivities. Among non-heme iron in the meals, 54-76% did not exchange with the added inorganic radio-iron tracer, depending on the degree of iron contamination of meals. The non-heme iron absorption coefficient was low in usual meals, but was higher for the special meal eaten during festive periods. When heme iron absorption was included, 85μg to 1.2mg iron was absorbed according to the type of meal. While the total iron absorption coefficient in the different meals varied up to 5-fold (between 1.4 and 5.1%), the bioavailable iron density varied up to 10-fold (between 17 and 184μg/100kcal).