Iron bioavailability from super enriched breads in weanling mice

Bread made from starch, unenriched, enriched, super-enriched and whole wheat flour was fed to male weanling mice for 21 days to explore the effect on iron utilization using liver, blood iron status and iron balance as parameters of evaluation. The results indicated that iron retentions, blood hemoglobin and hematocrit levels, and liver iron concentration numerically tended to be greater in mice fed super enriched bread than in mice fed the enriched bread but, for most parameters, these differences were not found to be statistically significant. Iron absorption from whole wheat bread was significantly poorer than the super enriched or enriched white wheat bread rations.