Sc. E.S. Chaves for the ET AAS analysis. “
“Iron deficiency is the most common and widespread nutritional disorder in the world, and is a public health problem in both industrialized and non-industrialized countries (World Health Organization, 2006). Iron deficiency is the result OSI906 of a long-term negative Fe balance: in its more severe stages, Fe deficiency causes anemia. About 40% of the world’s population (more than 2 billion individuals)

is thought to suffer from anemia. According to World Health Organization, 39% of children younger than 5 years, 48% of children between 5 and 14 years, 42% of all women, and 52% of pregnant women in developing countries are anemic, with half having Fe deficiency anemia (WHO, 2006). The main strategies for correcting Fe deficiency in populations are dietary modification or diversification to improve Fe intake

and bioavailability; Fe supplementation and Fe fortification of foods; and biofortification by plant breeding which has been considered as a promising approach to improve dietary Fe buy Vorinostat nutritional quality (Zimmermman & Hurrel, 2007). The dietary habits of a population group strongly affect the bioavailability of both dietary Fe and added fortifying Fe. Although the efficiency of Fe absorption increases as Fe stores become depleted, the amount absorbed from foods, especially where diets are low in meat, fish, fruit and vegetables, is not enough to prevent Fe deficiency in many women and children, especially in the developing countries (Zimmermman & Hurrel, 2007). For instance, the main cause of increasing Fe deficiency in Brazil is that the consumption of food items considered Fe sources has continually decreased. Indeed, the search for new food standards, proposals for food distribution Farnesyltransferase and knowledge about the diet composition must be the researcher’s target (Szarfarc, 2006). In recent years, several studies have emphasised the positive effects of dietary inulin-type fructans

(ITF; inulin and fructooligosaccharides [FOS]) on mineral bioavailability as a result of their fermentation in the large intestine (Lobo, Colli, Alvares, & Filisetti, 2007; Scholz-Ahrens & Schrezenmeir, 2007). The fermentation process favours the production of short-chain fatty acids (SCFA), which affect luminal pH, in turn affecting mineral solubility (Scholz-Ahrens & Schrezenmeir, 2007). These effects are also accompanied by modifications in the mucosal architecture of the intestine as a result of increases in both the cellularity and number of crypts, mechanisms which may contribute to an increase in the mineral absorptive surface (Kleessen et al., 2003 and Lobo et al., 2007). Inulin-type fructans are commonly found in almost all species of the Asteraceae family, many of which are economically important, such as Chicorium intybus and Helianthus tuberosus ( Carvalho & Figueiredo-Ribeiro, 2001).