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How to Fortify Foods with Vitamins and Minerals: Tips from the Ingredient Manufacturer

23 September 2025
The trend for vitamin-fortified foods is rapidly growing, with consumers increasingly opting for this option to maintain their health, energy, and beauty.
 
Olga Bushueva, Marketing and Sales Consultant at Zhejiang NHU Company, a vitamin and amino acid manufacturer, discussed how to properly fortify foods, what manufacturers should pay attention to, and which vitamins are most in demand today.
 
Demand for fortified and functional foods is growing. Manufacturers of baby food, dairy products, sports nutrition, and beverages have made a significant contribution to the popularization of fortified foods. For example, yogurt with prebiotics has long been a part of our daily lives. Instant cereals for children, breakfast cereals, and drinks with vitamins and amino acids for sports enthusiasts are well known to consumers. Growing demand can be seen in the category's development on marketplaces, where new fortified products are constantly appearing.

Today, consumers demand not so much specific vitamins as their added value. Energy, beauty, immunity, concentration, memory, and stress relief are what consumers seek in a food product, in addition to its basic nutritional value. Vitamin C is marketed as beneficial for immunity, while B vitamins are included in products to boost energy and improve brain function. Vitamin E, often combined with vitamin C, has antioxidant properties and is used in beauty products. A suitable complex of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and other beneficial supplements can be found for each category of interest to consumers.
 
For categories such as beverages, dairy products, snacks, and confectionery, fortification is especially relevant. Various snack bars—protein bars, sugar-free bars, cereal bars, bars with added vitamins and/or amino acids, and bars with omega-3—are a popular choice for consumers.
 
The fortification technology is selected depending on the finished product and the manufacturing process. Vitamins are supplied in dry form (powder or micro-granules) or in oil form.

Oil-based vitamins are used to fortify fat-containing foods, such as milk or vegetable oil. Using a ready-made mixture of vitamins A and D3 to enrich vegetable oil is most effective, as it allows for easy dosing of the vitamins, ensures uniform distribution, and allows for quick and inexpensive semi-quantitative analysis of the vitamin content in the finished product, which is especially important for large-scale production.
 
For example, in the production of functional beverages, fortified dairy products, and vitamin- and mineral-fortified flour, several vitamins and minerals are added in dry form. The dosage of some individual components is extremely small, and the cost of an error is the loss of the entire batch of finished product. In such cases, a vitamin and mineral complex (premix) is most often used—a dry mixture in which the components are specifically selected for the finished product.
 
It is important to note that deviations in the declared vitamin content, either upwards or downwards, from the permissible limits during the shelf life are not permitted under TR CU 021/2011 "On Food Safety."

Separate dosing of each vitamin and mineral significantly complicates the process and requires caution. Careful attention must be paid to the process of adding vitamins to the product, which is especially critical when the recipe contains multiple vitamins and minerals.
 
It is important to achieve the stated level for each functional component within the shelf life. Some vitamins are sensitive to light, oxygen, and heat, and may also lose activity in the presence of certain minerals. It is important to select the correct vitamin forms, formulate the finished product, and ensure appropriate packaging.
 
Fortification involves not only the production stage but also subsequent monitoring of the vitamin content in the finished food product. For monitoring, manufacturers most often use third-party accredited laboratories, which is expensive. Furthermore, sending samples and waiting for test results takes time. It is difficult for the manufacturer to make prompt adjustments, and the wait ties up working capital.

A number of problems can be eliminated or mitigated by using ready-made vitamin and mineral premixes, where the manufacturer selects the appropriate components and provides dosing and monitoring recommendations.
 
Once the concept for the finished product has been defined, collaboration is undertaken to select the form and formulation of the vitamin or vitamin premix. For example, a manufacturer wants to add vitamin E to a functional drink in a clear bottle. Most vitamin E formulations result in cloudiness. An experienced vitamin supplier, aware of this, can suggest a suitable form to ensure the drink remains clear and provide recommendations for component addition.
 
Once the product is selected, quality and safety documentation is exchanged: from certificates, allergen statements, GMO-free statements, and pesticide-free statements to the completion of special questionnaires. Multinational companies always require ISO 22000 certification or other systems that confirm quality and safety at an international level.

Next, the manufacturer conducts tests in its own production facility, including stability testing of the included vitamins and minerals. Here, the vitamin supplier's experience is crucial to help calculate dosages for a specific process and coordinate vitamin activity analysis methods.
 
I find information about the micronutrient status of our country's population very useful and would recommend studying them for further development of a finished product portfolio. For example, the Federal Research Center for Nutrition and Biotechnology regularly conducts research and publishes scientific articles on this topic. Deficiencies or insufficiencies of B vitamins and vitamin D3 are common in many regions of our country.
 
By producing vitamin-fortified milk, flour, or vegetable oil, you can significantly differentiate your brand from the crowd, gain a competitive advantage, and bring a deficient micronutrient to the public. I would suggest not trying to add too many vitamins and minerals to a food product, but adding those whose insufficiency or deficiency has been confirmed by scientific research, and relying on the functional properties of the added micronutrient for promotion.

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Source: sfera.fm

23 September 2025

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