Full text
| |
| Author(s): |
Melina Borges Teixeira
Total Authors: 1
|
| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | Ribeirão Preto. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (PCARP/BC) |
| Defense date: | 2014-07-30 |
| Examining board members: |
Márcia Andreia Mesquita Silva da Veiga;
Delia Rita Tapia Blácido;
José Anchieta Gomes Neto
|
| Advisor: | Márcia Andreia Mesquita Silva da Veiga |
| Abstract | |
Iron is an essential nutrient for almost all living species and plays essential roles in many biological systems, such as oxygen transport, respiration, energy metabolism, destruction of peroxides, and DNA synthesis. Iron deficiency in the body may cause various physiological disorders, such as anemia, which is related to hemoglobin levels in blood. One way to obtain the daily requirement of this nutrient and thus avoid the physiological disorders caused by its deficiency is to ingest fruits, vegetables, and meat, because they are rich in this element. This work evaluated the bioaccessibility (by in vitro methods) and the total amounts of iron and other macro and micronutrients in different types of food. Seeking correlations with the results, the percent composition and phytic acid content of the analyzed foods were also determined, and the concentration of heme iron in samples of bovine liver was analyzed. The total and bioaccessibles amounts of elements allowed to observe that among all foods, spinach contained the highest amount of total iron, but the bioaccessibility of this nutrient was low, below 20%, probably due to the high levels of oxalates and phytates (which have complexing capacity) in this type of food. Still regarding the bioaccessibility of this nutrient, bovine liver was the food with the highest amount of bioaccessible iron. However, cooking considerably reduced bioaccessibility of this nutrient. This decrease is correlated with the breakdown of the heme iron complex present in bovine liver, wich generated the less bioavailable and the less efficiently absorbed ionic iron. Concerning plant species, the results showed that potassium (K) had the highest total and bioaccessible amounts for the analyzed foods, a result that agreed with the fact that this element is essential for the growth of any kind vegetable. Determination of phytic acid (phytates) content showed that they correlated with the cations of the nutrients in the tasted foods differently; i. e., phytates affected the bioaccessibility of the analyzed elements to different degrees, depending on the stability of the complexes formed between the minerals present in a given food and phytic acid. The heme iron concentrations in bovine liver samples revealed that heating significantly lowered the percentage of heme iron present in the samples, which ranged from 33 to 43%. This decrease was related to the oxidative cleavage of the porphyrin ring. The reduction in heme iron was relatively large, since the release of heme iron complex only occurs at elevated temperatures from 85 to 100 ° C. (AU) | |
| FAPESP's process: | 12/10518-4 - Assessment and speciation of bioaccessible iron in food |
| Grantee: | Melina Borges Teixeira Zanatta |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Master |