Promoters effectiveness in the improvement in iron and zinc absorption from the rice and bean

Iron and zinc are essential micronutrients for the organism functioning and their lack can result in prejudices to human health. The information about the presence of minerals in the diet are normally referred to its total concentrations, however these values do not reproduce the fraction that might be bioaccessible for the human body. The objective of this study was to evaluate if the promoters increase the iron and zinc bioaccessibility in a rice-and-bean mix. For this, four treatments were elaborated, all containing rice and bean and varied between each other regarding the promoters added to this mix. Ascorbic acid and cysteine were the promoters chosen to evaluate the influence in the iron and zinc absorption. For this purpose, the tomato was chosen to act as ascorbic acid source and garlic and onion were chosen to act as cysteine source. The treatments with tomato presented a higher rate of iron, significantly differing from those without tomato in their composition. Treatment 4 was the one which provided the highest bioaccessibility for iron and was the only one that differed from the others. About zinc, there was no significant difference between the treatments regarding the total rate as well as the bioaccessibility.