3 in 1 Bread : Functional, bioavailable and meeting the health claims – how difficult can it be?

Abstract: Habitual consumption of inappropriate diets has not only been associated with insuf-ficient intake of micronutrients, but also increases risk factors for many chronic dis-eases such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases etc. In the field of food science, new opportunities have evoked where advanced food technology and nutri-tional science have been combined to develop functional food, which is food products with the purpose to bring the gap between food and health closer. Health features of bread have gained substantial interest in recent years. Given that bread is considered as staple food, enhancing bioavailability of nutrients in bread, in particular nutrients known to be insufficiently consumed may serve as a potential to improve the overall intake. Linking health claims recently approved by European Commission with bioavaila-bility of iron, iodine and folate and development of flour-based bread became the ob-jectives of the study. Review through literature studies was conducted concerning how bioavailability may be enhanced in bread. Furthermore, a flour-based recipe was developed in collaboration with Fazer where the objective was to estimate whether the requirements of iron, iodine and folate fulfilled the condition to use the health claims and if these nutrients were of bioavailable quantity. Results showed that bioavailability of iron and folate is increased during the fer-mentation process involving leavening agents such as yeast and lactic acid bacteria from sourdough. Fermentation causes modification of pH, which contributes to degra-dation of phytic acid that otherwise are bound to iron as insoluble complex impairing its bioavailability. Furthermore, leavening agents have been reported to compensate for potential losses of folate in the baking process, thereby enhancing overall folate levels. Iodine fortified in salt was shown to be retained after the baking process. How-ever, review of these results is dependent on additional factors ranging from condition of baker’s yeast, amount and strains of leavening agents as well as type of grains to baking time. Furthermore, the recipe developed to be tried-out in the test bakery at Fazer Eskilstuna turned out to just partly meet the requirements to use the health claims and partly sufficient in terms of bioavailable quantity. Using bread product as functional food may potentially improve consumption of those nutrients at risk of insufficient intake. Impact of fermentation methods are one approach to enhanced bioavailability of nutrients in bread. However, interaction among nutrients should not be overlooked as it may affect bioavailability in a negative way. The knowledge of bioavailability may be complex, but in the end, the health claims approved by European Commission only requires that the product is of a cer-tain amount and do not care whether the nutrients are of bioavailable quantity or not.