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Letters to the Editor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2009

Beena Mathur
Beena Mathur*
Affiliation:
Department of Home Science, University of RajasthanJaipur, India
*
Email: mathursd279@gmail.com
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Type
Letter to the Editor
Information
Public Health Nutrition , Volume 12 , Issue 9 , September 2009, pp. 1588 - 1589
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2009

Leaf concentrate

Not only lucerne

Madam

In a recent note within your letters section, you asked for evidence of the effects of leaf concentrate from sources other than Lucerne(1).

I am a Professor of Food and Nutrition at the University of Rajasthan in Jaipur. I have been working with leaf concentrate prepared from berseem and cowpea leaves, as well as from lucerne, for over two decades. At first I worked with its presentation and acceptability, and then I carried out a number of supplementary feeding trials with children, women, adolescent girls and pregnant women. The nutritional value of leaf concentrate is significant, but acceptability poses problems at higher levels. Since nutritional anaemia is a major public health problem in India, our focus has been on use of leaf concentrate for the alleviation of anaemia. We used 6–10 g of concentrate in supplementary feedings. Hb levels improved significantly as shown below:

  • • The Hb levels in children and young women increased by 12–16 % in the experimental group compared with the 1·7 % increase in the control group(Reference Mathur, Joshi and Bray2, Reference Mathur, Goyal, Varma, Arya and Rathi3).

  • • The pregnant women were able to maintain their Hb levels in spite of haemodilution in the ninth month of pregnancy, with median values increasing from 8·47 to 9·09 g/dl(Reference Mathur, Magon and Joshi4). This in turn affected the gestational period, weight gain during pregnancy and birth weight of the newborns.

  • • In anaemic adolescent girls, 10 g of concentrate (containing 8–9 mg Fe) was as effective as tablets containing 60 mg Fe and 500 μg folic acid (paper submitted for publication).

References

1.Anon. (2009) Leaf concentrate (Editor’s note). Public Health Nutr 12, 440.Google Scholar
2.Mathur, B, Joshi, RN & Bray, WT (1989) Impact of supplementing leaf protein concentrate on haemoglobin levels of children. Indian J Nutr Diet 26, 267.Google Scholar
3.Mathur, B, Goyal, A, Varma, S, Arya, A & Rathi, A (2000) Effect of lucerne and berseem leaves concentrate supplementation with and without ascorbic acid on the iron status of young women. Asian J Exp Sci 14, issue 1 & 2, 11–18.Google Scholar
4.Mathur, B, Magon, A & Joshi, P (2005) Improving maternal nutrition with leaf concentrate supplementation. In Technologies for empowering women. A compendium produced on the occasion of the International Conference on ‘Impact of women’s researches in science and technology in the new millennium’. Compiled and edited by Vinita Sharma, DST, New Delhi, and K Vijayalakshmi Centre for Indian Knowledge Systems, Chennai, India.Google Scholar