Volume 47, Issue 2 p. 609-613

Bioavailability of Iron Produced by the Corrosion of Steel in Apples

A. ROSANOFF

A. ROSANOFF

Authors Rosanoff and Kennedy are with the Dept. of Nutritional Sciences, 119 Morgan Hall. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA 94720.

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B. M. KENNEDY

B. M. KENNEDY

Authors Rosanoff and Kennedy are with the Dept. of Nutritional Sciences, 119 Morgan Hall. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA 94720.

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First published: March 1982
Citations: 5

Presented at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, Dallas, TX, April 1—11, 1979.

The authors thank Mr. Marc Schelstraete for excellent technical assistance on the iron analyses.

This research was supported from USDA Agricultural Experiment Station Project #3790 and a grant from the Feedstuffs Processing Company through the Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA.

ABSTRACT

The bioavailability of iron formed by the corrosion of low-carbon steel (99% Fe) in contact with Red Delicious apples was measured in a rat model using a depletion-repletion experiment. The percentage of ingested iron converted to hemoglobin iron (Conversion Efficiency) was 74, 57, and 56%, respectively, for daily doses of 110, 190, and 285 μg of this iron. (Conversion Efficiency for FeSO4 was 46-50%). When compared with FeSO4= 100, the relative biological value of this iron was found to range from 93–153. Ingestion of one Red Delicious apple that has been exposed to eight large iron nails for 24 hr could provide 10–15 mg iron having good bioavailability.