The majority of the deprived and undernourished population, especially in South-East Asia, subsists on diets heavily based on cereals. Such diets are likely to be low in a number of micronutrients, including the amino acid lysine. Strategies and activities to alleviate micronutrient deficiencies must include several approaches. The first involves improving dietary diversity by stimulating the production and consumption of micronutrient-rich foods. A complementary approach is fortification of common foods by the addition of micronutrients.
Fortification is especially applicable to cereals that are used in a milled form.
Fortification can be difficult where there are multiple small-scale producers but can be much simpler where large, centralized milling facilities exist. Additional requirements for successful fortification are the adoption and enforcement of appropriate legislation as well as the convincing of both consumers and professionals that such plans are to their benefit. Supplementation should only be considered as a temporary measure until long-term solutions can be implemented. It has, nevertheless, been very successful in alleviating the problems of vitamin A deficiency. The amino acid compositions of animal, pulse, and cereal proteins are sufficiently distinctive from each other to allow food group data to be used for simple predictions of the lysine value of diets.