Iron is an essential trace element in human nutrition and its deficiency is a world nutritional problem. Due to the high prevalence of anaemia in developing and industrialized countries, it is necessary to maintain a suitable iron intake through diet in order to achieve an appropriate status of this element in the body. For this reason, accurate knowledge of iron availability of foods is essential in order to plan intervention strategies that improve deficient situations of this nutrient. Regarding to the two forms of iron present in foods, heme iron has greater availability than non-heme iron. Beside this, non-heme iron availability is conditioned by several dietary factors, such as classic factors (meat, ascorbic acid, fibre, phytic acid, polyphenols) and new factors (caseinophosphopeptides and fructo-oligosaccharides with prebiotic characteristics). For that reason, the aim of this paper is to accurately review all investigations reported in the past decade related to dietetic factors that influence the bioavailability of different iron forms.

Zinc is an essential trace element in human nutrition and its deficiency is a world nutritional problem. However, the zinc content of foods is low and its availability is conditioned by several physiologic and dietary factors. For that reason, the objective of the present work is to compile past and present information about the influence of these factors on zinc availability to try to improve this availability.

Background: Technology—in particular, access to the Internet from a mobile device—has forever changed the way we relate to others and how we behave in our daily life settings. In recent years, studies have been carried out to analyze the effectiveness of different actions via mobile phone in the field of health: telephone calls, short message service (SMS), telemedicine, and, more recently, the use of push notifications. We have continued to explore ways to increase user interaction with mobile apps, one of the pending subjects in the area of mHealth. By analyzing the data produced by subjects during a clinical trial, we were able to extract behavior patterns and, according to them, design effective protocols in weight loss programs. Objective: A clinical trial was proposed to (1) evaluate the efficacy of push notifications in an intervention aimed at improving the body composition of adult women who are overweight or obese, through a dietary procedure, and (2) analyze the evolution of body composition based on push notifications and prescribed physical activity (PA). Methods: A two-arm randomized controlled trial was carried out. A sample size of 117 adult obese women attended a face-to-face, 30-minute consultation once a week for 6 months. All patients were supplied with an app designed for this study and a pedometer. The control group did not have access to functionalities related to the self-monitoring of weight at home, gamification, or prescription of PA. The intervention group members were assigned objectives to achieve a degree of compliance with diet and PA through exclusive access to specific functionalities of the app and push notifications. The same diet was prescribed for all patients. Three possible PA scenarios were studied for both the control and intervention groups: light physical activity (LPA), moderate physical activity (MPA), and intense physical activity (IPA). For the analysis of three or more means, the analysis of variance (ANOVA) of repeated means was performed to evaluate the effects of the intervention at baseline and at 3 and 6 months. Results: Receiving notifications during the intervention increased body fat loss (mean -12.9% [SD 6.7] in the intervention group vs mean -7.0% [SD 5.7] in the control group; P<.001) and helped to maintain muscle mass (mean -0.8% [SD 4.5] in the intervention group vs mean -3.2% [SD 2.8] in the control group; P<.018). These variations between groups led to a nonsignificant difference in weight loss (mean -7.9 kg [SD 3.9] in the intervention group vs mean -7.1 kg [SD 3.4] in the control group; P>.05). Conclusions: Push notifications have proven effective in the proposed weight loss program, leading women who received them to achieve greater loss of fat mass and a maintenance or increase of muscle mass, specifically among those who followed a program of IPA. Future interventions should include a longer evaluation period; the impact of different message contents, as well as message delivery times and frequency, should also be researched. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03911583; https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03911583