Boron content in daily meals for preschool children and school youth

Boron content in daily meals for preschool children and school youth was studied in this research. The boron content was measured in the meals taken from Wroclaw preschool and boarding school in December, March, June, and September. The whole meal was homogenized. Four grams of sample were mineralized and analyzed by inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES). Statistical assessment of the results was made with the Statistica v.5.1 program. The recovery was determined by the use of the standard additions method to evaluate the accuracy of the procedure. The mean boron content in 1 kg dry weight of a preschool meal was 2.31 mg B/kg dry wt, and in boarding-school meals, it was 2.15 mg B/kg dry wt. Based on these results, the estimated daily boron intake was calculated. The daily boron intake from food by preschool children was found to be 1.01 mg B/d for children and 1.2 mg B/d for youth. The actual intake of boron from food was determined after having related the quantity of the element to 1 kg of body weight. In the case of children, the mean intake of boron was 0.05 mg B/kg body wt/d, whereas in teenagers, it was 0.016 mg B/kg body wt/d. The results of this research show no significant differences between daily boron intake for preschool children and boarding-school youth.