Publications by authors named "S J Fomon"
Article Synopsis
- The study compared two infant cereals fortified with different forms of iron—electrolytic iron and ferrous fumarate—to evaluate their effectiveness in maintaining iron levels in breast-fed infants.
- Both cereals were consumed by infants from 4 to 9 months of age, but no significant differences in iron status were found between the two groups during the study.
- While a small percentage of infants showed mild iron deficiency, none developed iron deficiency anemia, suggesting that both types of iron fortification were equally effective.
For estimating the requirements for dietary iron, it is important to know the amount of iron that is lost from the body. Inevitable losses of iron have been determined in adult humans but not in infants or children. We administered (58)Fe, the least abundant stable isotope of iron, to free-living infants at 168 d of age (5.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- In growing adolescents, iron needs are determined by both growth requirements and the unavoidable loss of iron.
- The study used a stable isotope of iron, (58)Fe, to track total body iron changes over a 1.56 to 3.29-year period, allowing researchers to estimate iron loss.
- The findings showed that male adolescents lose approximately 256 mg of iron yearly (9.7% per year), while females lose about 306 mg yearly (14.6% per year), leading to estimated daily iron requirements of 1.46 mg for males and 1.15 mg for females, including both growth and loss.
During infancy, especially early infancy, a substantial proportion of the requirements for energy and specific nutrients are those needed for growth. Knowledge of the body composition of a reference infant (body size and chemical composition at the 50th centile for age) permits an estimate of the growth needs of the infant. In this communication, we review efforts from the 1960s to the present at defining the composition of the male and female reference infants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF