Understanding Enriched and Fortified Food

Many of us have come across the words ‘enriched’ or ‘fortified’ a number of times especially while buying cereals and salt from the grocery shop. We always make it a point to buy the brands which have these labels. At times we look in for these labels while purchasing junk or processed food however forgetting that these labels do not give the certification of junk food becoming healthy!

Often we think that enrichment means the process of adding extra nutrients to the food products. But the matter of fact is that there is a difference between enrichment and fortification.

Enriched foods: Enrichment is a process where the lost nutrients in food are added back. The loss of nutrients takes place during the process of manufacturing the food - milling, mixing, grinding, thawing or heating. For example, the vitamin B complex and iron get removed from flour due to milling and hence they are added back before packaging. The food companies can label flour as ‘enriched’ if it contains niacin, folic acid and iron.

Fortified foods: Fortification is a process in which extra nutrients are added by the food manufacturer.But the fortification must have some rationale behind it.These nutrients are essentially the ones that can help to meet up the defeciencies in the diet. Addition of vitamin A & D  to milk,iodine to salt,calcium to fruit juices are some of the examples of fortified foods.

There have been much of controversies surrounding the fortification of food products. Scientists have raised questions regarding the bioavailability of the nutrients as compared to the original food and if deliberate addition of the nutrients actually improves the nutritional quality of food and provide any health benefits.