What is food fortification?
Food fortification – also known as food enrichment – is when nutrients are added to food at higher levels than what the original food provides. This is done to address micronutrient deficiencies across populations, countries and regions.
Governments working with industry, international agencies and NGOs have used this method to help reduce and eliminate micronutrient deficiencies in their populations.
Fortification of centrally-processed staple foods is a simple, affordable and viable approach to reach large sections of a country’s population with iron, folic acid, and other essentialmicronutrients.
Adding micronutrients to common staple foods can significantly improve the nutritional quality of the food supply and improve public health with minimal risk. Â The foods most commonly fortified are salt, wheat, corn, rice, bouillon cubes, soya sauce and other condiments.
Many diets, especially those of the poor, contain insufficient amounts of vitamins and minerals due to lack of variation and/or consumption of predominantly processed foods.
Food fortification is the addition of key vitamin and minerals (e.g. iron, folic acid, iodine, vitamin A, and zinc) to staple foods to improve their nutritional content and address a nutritional gap in a population. A safe and effective means of improving public health that has been used around the world since the 1920s, it provides a nutritional benefit without requiring consumers to change eating habits or purchase patterns. In the developing world, commonly fortified foods include staple products such as salt, maize flour, wheat flour, sugar, vegetable oil, and rice.
Food fortification is also used in many developed countries. For those of you reading 
this who live in a developed country, yesterday you might have seasoned your food with iodized salt, enjoyed a glass of orange juice fortified with vitamin C, or poured milk that had vitamin D and calcium onto your cereal, which was fortified with iron, folic acid, and other B vitamins.
Food fortification is widely accepted by numerous populations and international and regional health organizations. It has proven incredibly successful in countries from the United States and Canada to Guatemala, Chile, South Africa, and China due to its proven cost effectiveness and health impact. The World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, and The Gates Foundation, to name only a few, endorse food fortification as a primary means of improving micronutrient health. In fact, the Copenhagen Consensus went so far as to determine that three of the top five most cost effective global development programs were micronutrient interventions.
COST VERSUS BENEFIT
HOW DO PEOPLE OBTAIN MICRONUTRIENTS?
Since most populations in resource-poor settings do not have access to adequate quantities of fruits, vegetables, and meats where micronutrients are abundant, and because providing vitamin tablets poses logistical and economic constraints, food fortification is a practical and inexpensive alternative.
However, for some particular population segments, fortification alone is not enough to provide adequate nutritional status since fortification only works when food is processed. There will always be people who grow and process their own food or buy non-processed staples (e.g. plantains, sweet potatoes) that fortification doesn’t reach. A number of different, complementary interventions are, therefore needed for these particularly groups to address vitamin and mineral deficiencies including supplementation, dietary diversification, education, and other public health measures.
