Use of white beans instead of red beans may improve iron bioavailability from a Tanzanian complementary food mixture.

In the study presented, an in vitro digestion/Caco-2 cell culture model was used to assess the amount of bioavailable iron from a modified Tanzanian complementary food formulation. The main objective of the study was to determine whether a change from red beans to white beans in the complementary food recipe would improve iron bioavailability from the mixture, as recent studies had indicated that iron bioavailability in white beans is significantly higher compared to that in the colored beans. The white beans had a significantly higher (p<0.0001) amount of ferritin formation (13.54 ng/mg) when compared to all other porridge ingredients including the red beans (2.3 ng/mg), and it is plausible that the complementary food formulated with the white beans may be superior to that formulated with the red beans, with reference to iron bioavailability. The results are important as they suggest that substitution of complementary food ingredients with high anti-nutrient concentrations with those that have lower anti-nutrient concentrations may improve iron bioavailability from complementary food home-recipes.