Bioavailability of Iron to rats from nitrite and erythorbate cured processed meats

Comments on bioavailability of iron to rats from nitrite and erythorbate cured processed meats

“…Earlier, we found that adding erythorbate during meat curing did not affect the bioavailability of the meat iron whether added with or without sodium nitrite (Table I). This finding is similar to what Lee et al (1984) observed. Both observations are inconsistent with the increased iron uptake observed with feeding ascorbic acid.…”

“…(This was similar to the residual nitrite in the meat used to prepare the diets for their experiment 1.) Lee et al (1984) with 33.9 ppm of dietary residual sodium nitrite (22.6 ppm of nitrite ion) found a statistically nonsignificant 33% increase in efficiency of converting ingested iron to hemoglobin iron for their nitrite added meat diet. Their failure to observe statistical significance for this great a nitrite effect was probably due to lack of sensitivity of their model since meat accounted 104 10/14 °Each value is a mean of 10 rats that had been made iron deficient during a 7-day period by feeding a low-iron diet and bleeding as previously described [experiment 1, Mahoney et al (1979)].…”

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Comments on Bioavailability of Iron to Rats from Nitrite and Erythorbate Cured Processed Meats Sir: We have read the paper "Bioavailability of Iron to Rats and Nitrite and Erythorbate Cured Processed Meats" by Lee et al (1984) with interest. This is an important subject that deserves careful study because of the huge amounts of cured meat products consumed throughout the

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Rebuttal to bioavailability of iron to rats from nitrite and erythorbate cured processed meats

“…In addition, all animals fed the meat-based diets had a lower final hematocrit, increases in hematocrit, increases in hemoglobin, and hemoglobin regeneration efficiencies than the control animals fed L+Fe. These differences were significant at the p < 0.05 level for all groups and were significant at p < 0.01 for several of the groups as indicated in Table III (Lee et al, 1984).…”

“…Our statement in the discussion that "rats utilized total heme and nonheme iron in the meat-based diets less efficiently than the nonheme iron in the control diet" is well supported. Highly significant (p < 0.01) differences were reported between all the rats fed the meat diets (uncured, +E, +N, +E+N) and the rats fed the L+Fe control diet in regard to plasma iron, tibia iron, liver iron, and liver nonheme iron [Lee et al (1984), Table IV]. In addition, all animals fed the meat-based diets had a lower final hematocrit, increases in hematocrit, increases in hemoglobin, and hemoglobin regeneration efficiencies than the control animals fed L+Fe.…”