Heavily fortified foods may be harmful to our children: study

Foods fortified with f vitamin A, zinc, niacin and other vitamins seem like an appealing food option to offer children, however a new report released by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a national environmental health research and advocacy organization, said this may be actually harmful for children.

According to the new report, their researchers found that 114 cereals, such as General Mills Wheaties and Kellogg's Krave were fortified with 30 percent or more of the adult Daily Value for vitamin A, zinc, and/or niacin, while 27 common brands of snack bars, such as Balance Bars and Marathon bars, were fortified with 50 percent or more of the adult Daily Value of at least one of these nutrients.

"Heavily fortified foods may sound like a good thing, but when it comes to children and pregnant women, excessive exposure to high nutrient levels could actually cause short or long-term health problems," said Renee Sharp, EWG's research director and co-author of the report. "Manufacturers use vitamin and mineral fortification to sell their products, adding amounts in excess of what people need and more than might be prudent for young children to consume." Children typically have lower nutrient needs than adults.

Although the Food and Drug Administration is currently updating nutrition facts labels that appear on most food packages, none of its proposed changes address the issue of over-consumption of fortified micronutrients, or that the recommended percent daily values for nutrition content that appear on the labels are based on adults,, said Sharp.

Only "a tiny, tiny percentage" of cereal packages carry nutrition labels that list age-specific daily values, Sharp says. "That's misleading to parents and is contributing to the problem."

The daily values for most vitamins and minerals that appear on nutrition facts labels were set by the FDA in 1968 and haven't updated, she says, making them "wildly out-of-sync" with currently recommended levels deemed safe by the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences.