Vitamin B-6 intakes of lactating women: analyzed vs calculated values

Results of our study suggest that calculation of vitamin B-6 content of diets using a current database can provide a reasonably good estimation of the vitamin B-6 intakes of a population of lactating women. Our study also demonstrates that the mean vitamin B-6 intake of this group of lactating women 2 months after they had given birth, who were not using vitamin B-6 supplements, was 1.45 mg, which is less than 70% of the RDA. However, on the basis of guidelines for the assessment of vitamin B-6 status using dietary vitamin B-6:protein ratio (15,20), the women appeared to be consuming adequate amounts of vitamin B-6.