IRON BIOAVAILABILITY FROM SUPER ENRICHED BREADS IN WEANLING MICE

Bread made from starch, unenriched, enriched, super-enriched and whole wheat flour was fed to male weanling mice for 21 days to explore the effect on iron utilization using liver, blood iron status and iron bal ance as parameters of evaluation. The resuts indicated that iron reten tions, blood hemoglobin and hematocrit levels, and liver iron concentr ation numerically tended to be greater in mice fed super enriched brea d than in mice fed the enriched bread but, for most parameters, these differences were not found to be statistically significant. Iron absor ption from whole wheat bread was significantly poorer than the super e nriched or enriched white wheat bread rations.