Enhancing the vitamin content of meat and eggs: Implications for the human diet

Abstract

Enhancing the vitamin content of meat and eggs provides an opportunity to increase the levels of key nutrients-especially those deemed to be at marginal or insufficient levels-in the human diet for optimal health and well-being. In general, enhancement efforts have focussed on developing feeding strategies to achieve optimal vitamin levels in meat and eggs. The definition of an optimal strategy is influenced by factors such as: (1) the efficiency of vitamin transfer into the final product, (2) the impact on animal performance or health, (3) the impact on the quality characteristics of the final product and (4) economic considerations. Vitamins are an extremely diverse class of nutrients in terms of their chemical and physical properties. Each vitamin differs with respect to stability during processing, susceptibility to bioconversion within the intestinal tract, digestibility, transport and storage in tissues. It follows that the development of vitamin-enriched meat and eggs will be highly dependent on the interaction of multiple factors. Ultimately, the success of such strategies must be judged against the contributions that the enriched products make to the human diet in terms of vitamin intake and consumer acceptance of the products. Key words: Meat, eggs, vitamin enhancement, bioavailability, dietary reference intakes