Abstract
Everyone needs vitamins and minerals to stay healthy. But it’s not always easy to get all you need. Health organizations can help people by fortifying common foods with vitamins or minerals. Adding them to food means you can get the micronutrients you need without taking a vitamin pill. In rural Cambodia, many people struggle to eat enough thiamine. Thiamine – aka vitamin B1 – is important. It helps brain development in infants and is needed by the muscles and heart. Infants often get the vitamins they need from their mother’s milk. If the mother doesn’t have enough thiamine in her diet, then the baby won’t either.
We wanted to know whether fortified salt would be a good way to help people get enough thiamine. We recruited hundreds of Cambodian families to taste-test thiamine-fortified salt. Most people liked the new salt, especially when they cooked with it. Thiamine-fortified salt could help lots of people!