Fortifying foods – flour, cooking oil, salt, and other staples – with essential vitamins and minerals is a safe, sustainable, cost-effective way to enrich the diets of large populations.
Programs such as salt iodization have demonstrated the effectiveness of fortification, protecting the brains and IQ of hundreds of millions of children for more than two decades.
This year, organizations working on food fortification, including the Iodine Global Network (IGN) and the Global Alliance for Food fortification (GAIN), are partnering to place food fortification high on the agendas of the United Nations Foods Systems Summit and the Nutrition for Growth meeting.
GAIN and IGN, along with other partners including UNICEF, the Micronutrient Forum, Nutrition International, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Food Programme and others have issued a commitment guide for policymakers participating in the events. The guide helps stakeholders to understand what they can do to promote the production and use of fortified foods. The partners are also pitching fortification and biofortification as a game-changing solution at the Food Systems Summit and plans are under way to raise the profile of food fortification at the Nutrition for Growth event.
