Consequences of Micronutrient Deficiency and Interventions to Improve Micronutrient Status

Infants are prone to micronutrient deficiency and indeed millions of infants worldwide are deficient in at least one micronutrient [1], although most infants are deficient in several micronutrients at the same time [2]. An important reason why micronutrient deficiencies often occur concurrently is that the same causal factors to some degree underlie deficiencies of many different nutrients. Monotonous and unbalanced diets, lack of animal-based food products in the diet, and anti-nutritional or absorption-inhibiting factors in the diet will all reduce the nutritional value of a diet [3]. For instance, potent cation-binding substances such as phytates, which are commonly found in cereal diets, make those diets have a particularly low bioavailability for iron as well as for zinc [3, 4]. Such dietary flaws are associated with poverty, and will result in nutritional deficiencies, even when basic energy and protein needs are met, which is often not even the case. As a result, infants and children are at risk for deficiency of not just a single micronutrient but often a whole range of micronutrients to varying extents, the exact combinations determined by the general dietary pattern (e.g., rice-based or maize-based) and the gaps between intake and requirement.