Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA.
Department of Animal Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA.
Nutrients. 2024 Aug 18;16(16):2756. doi: 10.3390/nu16162756.
Iron is an essential mineral that supports biological functions like growth, oxygen transport, cellular function, and hormone synthesis. Insufficient dietary iron can lead to anemia and cause fatigue, cognitive impairment, and poor immune function. Animal-based foods provide heme iron, which is more bioavailable to humans, while plant-based foods typically contain less bioavailable non-heme iron. Edible insects vary in their iron content and may have heme or non-heme forms, depending on their diet. Edible insects have been proposed as a protein source that could address issues of food insecurity and malnutrition in low resource contexts; therefore, it is important to understand the bioavailability of iron from insect-based foods. In this study, we used Inductively Coupled Plasma and Mass Spectrometry (IPC-MS) and Caco-2 cell culture models to compare the soluble and bioavailable iron among five different lab-produced tempeh formulations featuring (mealworm) with their non-fermented raw ingredient combinations. Finally, we compared the iron bioavailability of a mealworm tempeh with two sources of conventional beef (ground beef and sirloin steaks) and two commercially available plant-based meat alternatives. The results show that while plant-based meat alternatives had higher amounts of soluble iron, particularly in the Beyond Burger samples, the fermented mealworm-based tempeh had greater amounts of bioavailable iron than the other samples within the set. While all the samples presented varying degrees of iron bioavailability, all products within the sample set would be considered good sources of dietary iron.
铁是一种必需的矿物质，支持生长、氧气运输、细胞功能和激素合成等生物功能。膳食中铁不足可导致贫血，并引起疲劳、认知障碍和免疫功能低下。动物源性食品提供血红素铁，对人类更具生物可利用性，而植物性食品通常含有较少的生物可利用的非血红素铁。食用昆虫的铁含量不同，其铁的形式可能是血红素或非血红素，具体取决于其饮食。食用昆虫已被提议作为一种蛋白质来源，可以解决资源匮乏环境中的粮食不安全和营养不良问题；因此，了解昆虫类食物中的铁的生物利用度非常重要。在这项研究中，我们使用电感耦合等离子体质谱（ICP-MS）和 Caco-2 细胞培养模型，比较了五种不同的实验室生产的 tempeh 配方（粉虫）与其未发酵的原料组合之间的可溶性和生物可利用铁。最后，我们比较了粉虫 tempeh 的铁生物利用度与两种传统牛肉（绞牛肉和牛里脊牛排）和两种市售植物性肉类替代品的铁生物利用度。结果表明，虽然植物性肉类替代品的可溶性铁含量较高，特别是在 Beyond Burger 样本中，但发酵的粉虫基 tempeh 的生物可利用铁含量高于设定样本中的其他样本。虽然所有样本的铁生物利用度都存在差异，但样本集中的所有产品都将被视为膳食铁的良好来源。
