Saving lives one cup of tea at a time

Nearly 600,000 perinatal deaths and more than 100,000 maternal deaths are caused by iron deficiency each year, the World Health Organization says.

Professor Emeritus Levente Diosady of Chemical Engineering believes these numbers can be reduced by creating an ‘iron brew,’ or in other words, developing iron-fortified tea leaves for consumption.

He was recently awarded a $250,000 grant for his research idea from the prestigious competition, Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development. Diosady was the lone Canadian among 22 grant recipients.

The international competition, now in its third year, calls on the brightest, most innovative minds across the globe to identify transformative prevention, as well as treatment approaches, for pregnant women and newborns in the developing world.

Diosady was part of a team that was first to fortify salt with iodine, then later with iron. Speaking to The Globe and Mail, he said trying to fortify tea with iron was the next logical step.

“Tea is really consumed in South Asia by practically everybody, but the problem is the chemistry is much, much more difficult,” he said. “The last couple of years we’ve been working on the delivery system.”

The biggest challenge is overcoming a biomolecule in tea called tannin, Diosady said. When iron and tannin meet, a compound is formed that the body can’t absorb. The technology he has developed encapsulates the iron in a coating, preventing it from reacting with the tannin.

His goal is to get the encapulated iron to the intestines, where it can then be absorbed by the body. The Saving Lives at Birth grant will allow his research team to determine what kind of coating will work best with tea, as well as withstand hot water.

Diosady hopes his research will be fully developed within the next five years.

(Read more about Diosady in the Globe and Mail.) (Read more about Diosady in the Toronto Star.)

Liz Do is a writer with the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering at the University of Toronto.