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).
