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Food Fortification as a Global Public Health Intervention: Strategies to Deal with Barriers to Adoption, Application and Impact Assessment

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Handbook of Food Fortification and Health

Abstract

Food fortification with micronutrients continues to be one of the possible policy options to tackle micronutrient malnutrition as it is considered a more sustainable and cost-effective method available to improve public health, especially when it is mandated [1, 2]. Food fortification can provide relatively rapid solutions to address low micronutrient intakes at a population level, as it does not require complex behaviour change and enables maintenance of traditional dietary patterns [3–5]. Whilst it is adopted in a number of developing countries where it remains one of the key strategies to tackle these serious issues, a relatively small proportion of foods are currently fortified on a mandatory basis in the Western Europe. Given the persistence of pockets of micronutrient malnutrition within Europe and a patchy approach to food fortification globally, questions can be raised about public health policy realities that act to constrain wider use of food fortification.

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Abbreviations

EU:

European Union

EC:

European Commission

SME:

Small and medium enterprise

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Correspondence to Lada Timotijevic BSc, PhD, CPsychol .

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Timotijevic, L., Timmer, A., Ogunlade, A. (2013). Food Fortification as a Global Public Health Intervention: Strategies to Deal with Barriers to Adoption, Application and Impact Assessment. In: Preedy, V., Srirajaskanthan, R., Patel, V. (eds) Handbook of Food Fortification and Health. Nutrition and Health. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7110-3_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7110-3_18

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