How can a food company "inserts" vitamins to it's products?

Question

For example Minute Maid Home Squeezed Style Orange Juice has Vitamin D, Vitamin C and Calcium among other nutritional factors.

How can they do that? Is it liquid and they injectate it?

Answer 1

Vitamins are contained in other compounds, and they add those compounds to get the vitamins. For example, in the orange juice example you mentioned above, ascorbic acid is about 97% vitamin C (and ironically, it's often extracted from oranges), so they add ascorbic acid to the orange juice to bump up the vitamin C content. Calcium is added as a powder that dissolves in the orange juice, etc. If you're making cereal and fortifying it, you'll probably use powdered forms and mix them in with the flour that you use to make the flakes, etc.

Answer 2

For liquids- they'll just put the vitamins in cause most of the time, the vitamins have some sort of metal in it (like Calcium or Mg), so they'll dissolve into the liquid pretty easy and you won't taste anything different.

For stuff like bread- they'll add it into the dough before baking, but then after baking, its all gone and evaporated so its not ever really there.

Answer 3

This is not always very simple because the vitamin has to be added without changing the flavor of the food. Food companies must spend a lot of money and time in R&D to pin down the right process and mixture.

Answer 4

Vitamins are added to many foods. Look at the label on a cereal box. In liquids it is just put in and the water soluble ones dissolve and the fat soluble ones find something to ride on. In solid foods it is just put on one of the components.

Answer 5

chemicals are chemicals, whether called vitamins, hydrogenated vegetable oil, or flour.
every chemical has it's own handling characteristics, and there are few that can not be liquidfied.
after that it is only a case of metering the amounts used.
since food is processed hundreds of gallons at a time, metering doesn't have to be real exact.