A New Technique for Determining Micronutrient Nutritional Quality in Fruits and Vegetables Based on the Entropy...

The human body needs nutrients to maintain its regular physiological activity. It requires 40 essential nutrients, including macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein, and fat) and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals). Although macronutrient intake has been improved in China due to people's increased social awareness, the population's micronutrient intake remains insufficient.

The current food evaluation system is primarily used to assess macronutrients, while an effective assessment method for micronutrients is still lacking. Fruits and vegetables are low-energy food sources that mainly provide vitamins and minerals and supply the human body with various micronutrients.

In this paper, the entropy and fuzzy recognition methods were used to construct the Vitamin Index (Vitamin Index = Vitamin A Index + Vitamin Comprehensive Index + Vitamin Matching Index) and Mineral Index (Mineral Index = Calcium Index + Mineral Comprehensive Index + Mineral Matching Index) and to evaluate the micronutrient quality of 24 vegetables and 20 fruits.

The assessment results showed that Chinese dates displayed the highest Vitamin and Mineral Index among fruits (Vitamin Index = 2.62 and Mineral Index = 2.63), while collard greens had the highest Vitamin Index of the vegetables, at 2.73, and red amaranth had the highest Mineral Index, at 2.74.

The study introduces a new method for assessing the nutritional quality of micronutrients, which provides a new idea for assessing the nutrient quality of agricultural products.