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IRON UTILIZATION BY VEGETARIANS AND OMNIVORES
Abstract
The ability of vegetarian diets to provide adequate amounts of available iron to iron deficiency vulnerable groups has been questioned. Soy-based products that frequently replace meat in the diets of many vegetarians have been suspected of inhibiting mineral utilization. However, it is postulated that adaptation may occur; hence, long-time vegetarians may exhibit improved utilization of minerals found in a vegetarian diet. It was found from both a dietary survey and a laboratory controlled diet experiment that iron nutritional status of vegetarians and omnivores is essentially the same except for a higher TIBC and a numerically, but not significantly lower serum ferritin for the vegetarians than the omnivores. The higher TIBC may represent an adaptive mechanism to provide greater absorptive surfaces for dietary iron while subjects are consuming a plant-based diet. Fecal iron losses and percent food iron recovered in the feces by the vegetarians while consuming a laboratory controlled lacto-vegetarian diet were less than by omnivores consuming either a lacto-vegetarian or an omnivore diet, suggesting that vegetarians make somewhat better utilization of dietary nonheme iron. A study of mice showed that the absorption of nonheme iron found in soybean meal tends to be enhanced by ascorbid acid. The absorption of the ferrous sulfate supplement added to a soy isolate meat analogue was not enhanced by ascorbic acid. Analysis of the iron content of foods available to college students from a lacto-ovo-vegetarian food service during a three-day period tended to indicate higher values than reported handbook values. This suggests that iron intakes in survey studies using handbook values may underestimate actual iron intakes.
Subject Area
Nutrition
Recommended Citation
MCENDREE, LENORE SCHMID, "IRON UTILIZATION BY VEGETARIANS AND OMNIVORES" (1982). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8227025.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8227025