Indian Prime Minister announced nutrient fortified rice through under welfare schemes like public distribution system and mid-day-meal scheme.
Rice fortification is currently compulsory in six countries: Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and the Philippines. In USA FDA has not issued any mandatory standards for manufacture and follows labelling as standard. Manufacturers need to identify versions of food products that are enriched and those that are not.
health strategy to improve the iron status of populations, in
settings where rice is a staple food. Fortification of rice with
vitamin A may be used as a public health strategy to improve
the iron status and vitamin A nutrition of
populations. Fortification of rice with folic acid may be used as
a public health strategy to improve the folate nutritional status
of populations.
Are the nutrients in fortifed rice retained after preparation and
cooking?
When produced using extrusion or rinse-resistant coating
technologies, fortifed rice will retain nutrients through various
preparation and cooking conditions, including washing and
cooking in excessive water that is later discarded. The
micronutrients in the fortifed kernels produced with extrusion
technology are evenly distributed throughout the kernels.
Therefore, the nutrients are adequately sealed and
adequately retained through preparation and cooking.
However, when fortifed rice is produced using dusting or
coating that is not rinse-resistant, nutrients will be lost if the
rice is washed prior to cooking. There is ongoing additional
research in this area to further identify potential diferences in
nutrient retention between diferent rice preparation and
cooking methods and fortifcation technologies.
Extrusion is the preferred technology for rice fortification
because of the stability of micronutrients in the rice kernels
across processing, storage, washing, cooking, and in view of
cost considerations. Fortified Rice Kernels (FRK) produced
using extrusion technology are made with rice flour and
micronutrients such as iron, folic acid, Vitamin B12 as
mandatory and zinc, vitamin A, thiamine (vitamin B1 ),
riboflavin (vitamin B2 ), niacin (vitamin B3 ), and pyridoxine
(vitamin B6 ) as optional micronutrients.
Best Engineering Technologies is one of the manufacturers of
Fortified Rice. The firm is a supplier of Herbal plants,
Essential oil plants, Food processing plants, spice powder
plants, cashew nut processing plants etc.
