Challenges to Quantify Total Vitamin Activity: How to Combine the Contribution of Diverse Vitamers?
REVIEW CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS IN NUTRITION Challenges to Quantify Total Vitamin Activity: How to Combine the Contribution of Diverse Vitamers? Jette Jakobsen ,1 Alida Melse-Boonstra ,2 and Michael Rychlik 3,4 1National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark; 2Division of Human Nutrition and Health, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands; 3Technical University of Munich, Freising, Germany; and 4Centre for Nutrition and Food Sciences, Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, The University of Queensland, Coopers Plains, Australia ABSTRACT This state-of-the-art review aims to highlight the challenges in quantifying vitamin activity in foods that contain several vitamers of a group, using as examples the fat-soluble vitamins A and D as well as the water-soluble folate. The absorption, metabolism, and physiology of these examples are described along with the current analytical methodology, with an emphasis on approaches to standardization. Moreover, the major food sources for the vitamins are numerated. The article focuses particularly on outlining the so-called SLAMENGHI factors influencing a vitamer’s’ ability to act as a vitamin, that is, molecular species, linkage, amount, matrix, effectors of absorption, nutrition status, genetics, host-related factors, and the interaction of these. After summarizing the current approaches to estimating the total content of each vitamin group, the review concludes by outlining the research gaps and future perspectives in vitamin analysis. There are no standardized methods for the quantification of the vitamers of vitamin A, vitamin D, and folate in foods. For folate and β-carotene, a difference in vitamer activity between foods and supplements has been confirmed, whereas no difference has been observed for vitamin D.
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