A COMPARISON OF IRON-ABSORPTION FROM SINGLE MEALS AND DAILY DIETS USING RADIOFE (FE-55,FE-59)

The purpose of the present study was to compare two measures of Fe abs orption, one from single meals and the other from daily diets, Ten ile ostomy subjects were given the same low-fibre composite diet for all t hree meals each day for five consecutive days. After 3 weeks the exper iment was repeated with a high-fibre diet. The morning meal constitute d one-seventh of the total daily diet intake, the mid-day meal two-sev enths and the evening meal four-sevenths of the total daily diet intak e, On days 4 and 5 of each diet period the morning meal was labelled w ith Fe-55 and all three meals were labelled with Fe-59, The activities retained in the subjects 19 d later showed the Fe absorption from the low-fibre diet measured from the morning meals to be almost 80 % grea ter than the average Fe absorption measured from all meals during the same 2 d. With the high-fibre diet the absorption from the morning mea ls was less than 50 % greater than the average for all meals but the d ifference was not significant, We suggest that all meals of the day sh ould be labelled with radioFe in order to avoid inflating the measures of Fe absorption.