Miller Magazine Issue: 136 April 2021

74 MILLER / aprıl 2021 COVER STORY ‘Fortifying flour would make sense’ Mongolia is among the pioneers of the fortification of flour with vitamin D. According to a current legislative initiative, industrially produced flour must in future be upgraded with 0.025mg/kg vitamin D in addition to other micronutrients. The availability of the “sunshine vitamin” is critically low in Mongolia. In a representative study 1 the vitamin D level of 541 inhabitants between 10 and 64 years of age was analyzed. The basis used for measurement was blood levels of 25-hydroxy vitamin D (25-OH-D). The optimum value is considered to be 30 ng/mL, but the average level found among the test subjects was only 16.9 ng/mL. The deficiencies were especially mas- sive in the capital Ulaanbaatar. The average detected in the blood serum of these city dwellers was only 7.9 ng/ mL 25-hydroxy vitamin D. Scientists assume that these extremely low values are due in part to environmental factors: “Ulaanbaatar is the most air-polluted area in Mongolia, which reduces the amount of ultraviolet-B ra- diation required for the synthesis of pre-vitamin D.” Another paper2 on the vitamin D status of the popula- tion of Mongolia focuses on the effects of this deficiency on health: “Mongolians have a high incidence and/or prev- alence of several diseases linked to low 25(OH)D con- centrations, including ischaemic heart disease, malignant neoplasms, cirrhosis of the liver, ischaemic stroke, lower respiratory tract infections, preterm birth complications and diabetes mellitus.” In view of eating habits in the region, the two authors William B. Grant and Barbara J. Boucher ex- pressly advocated the addition of vitamin D to flour in order to minimize health risks of this kind: “For a country such as Mongolia, which consumes a large portion of its dietary en- ergy intake from wheat, fortifying flour would make sense.” References: 1 Spatial Epidemiology of Vitamin D Status in Mongolia, Environmental Epidemiology, October 2019. 2 A Review of the Potential Benefits of Increasing Vita- min D Status in Mongolian Adults through Food Fortifica- tion and Vitamin D Supplementation. Nutrients. 2019 Oct. Stability test of vitamin D in flour , , , , , , , , , , , Vitamin D (MG/KG) Months Analytical variation Batch A Batch B