Abstract
Various meals being currently consumed by urban Japanese were determined for iodine, The meal samples were collected in 1982 and 1984. The habitual daily home meals of 4 middle-aged Japanese living in urban areas contained 45-1, 921μg (mean; 362, 361, 429 and 1, 023μg, respectively) of iodine per day. The regular meals served in two university hospitals contained 95-287μg (mean; 195μg) and 89-4, 746μg (mean; 1, 290μg) of iodine per day, respectively, and the diets for diabetes mellitus contained 59-144μg (mean; 96μg) of iodine per day. In the daily meals containing iodine exceeding ca. 300μg, some kinds of seaweeds and, in some cases, several foods containing a red food color with low iodine bioavailability, erythrosine, provided a large portion of iodine. The iodine contents of refectory meals in a university were 47-203μg (mean; 113μg) per meal and those of lunches in two elementary schools were 25-31μg (mean; 27μg) and 18-43μg (mean; 36μg) per lunch, respectively. These results suggest that the current daily iodine intake of urban Japanese is not great and that erythrosine elevates the iodine content of meals.
