Abstract

Majority of the world’s population, especially those inhabited in the developing countries lack access to balanced diets because larger portion of the population live on staple plant-based foods which usually lack diversity and consequently resulted in micronutrient deficiencies. It has been established that micronutrient deficiencies arising from the consumption of plant and plant-based foods are mainly caused by failure of absorption rather than dietary deficiency. It is therefore necessary to explore the means through which substantial part of the available minerals would be made bioavailable. Fortunately, many simple, low cost household's traditional food processing techniques have the potentials to improve the bioavailability of many of these essential micronutrients including zinc, iron, vitamins B group and C majorly through reduction of the inherent anti-nutritional factors. This paper therefore discusses micronutrients absorption and bioavailability using iron and zinc as examples and the traditional food processing techniques that could enhance the bioavailability of some of these micronutrients in plant-based diets with the aim of ensuring nutrition security and eradicating hidden hunger among the indigenous people of Africa and other developing countries. This review also realised the need for more studies on the in-vitro and in vivo micronutrients bioavailability of plant and plant-based foods in order to effectively tackle micronutrient deficiency among the populace.

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