Food iron absorption. I. Use of semisynthetic diet to study absorption of nonheme iron.

Recent studies have established the validity of employing an extrinsic radioiron tag to measure the absorption of nonheme iron from a complex meal. In the present study, extrinsic tagging was used to measure absorption of nonheme iron from a standard meal chosen as representative of a typical American meal, and from a semisynthetic meal having the same total chemical composition. The latter was designed so that the major dietary components could be systematically altered to determine their separate effects on food iron absorption. Absorption from the standard meal in 32 healthy women averaged 10.0% as compared with a mean absorption of 1.8% from semisynthetic meal. Most but not all of this fivefold difference in absorption could be explained by the enhancing effect of meat in the standard meal. The low availability of iron from the semisynthetic meal will be of particular value in studying factors which enhance food iron absorption, whereas the standard meal is suitable for studying factors which reduce availability of food iron.