Iodine content of various meals currently consumed by urban Japanese.

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Abstract
Various meals being currently consumed by urban Japanese were determined for iodine. The meal samples were collected in 1982 and 1984. The habitual daily home meals of 4 middle-aged Japanese living in urban areas contained 45-1,921 .mu.g (mean; 362, 361, 429 and 1,023 .mu.g, respectively) of iodine per day. The regular meals served in two university hospitals contained 95-287 .mu.g (mean; 195 .mu.g) and 89-4,746 .mu.g (mean; 1,290 .mu.g) of iodine per day, respectively, and the diets for diabetes mellitus contained 59-144 .mu.g (mean; 96 .mu.g) of iodine per day. In the daily meals containing iodine exceeding ca. 300 .mu.g, some kinds of seaweeds and, in some cases, several foods containing a red food color with low iodine bioavailability, erythrosine, provided a large portion of iodine. The iodine contents of refectory meals in a university were 47-203 .mu.g (mean; 113 .mu.g) per meal and those of lunches in two elementary schools were 25-31 .mu.g (mean; 27 .mu.g) and 18-43 .mu.g (mean; 36 .mu.g) per lunch, respectively. These results suggest that the current daily iodine intake of urban Japanese is not great and that erythrosine elevates the iodine content of meals.