The nutritional iron absorption from a typical peruvian diet was studied by the Eakins and Brown method. The foods were breakfast: coffee and bread with butter; lunch: vegetable soup rice with cow tripe stew and lemonade; dinner: vegetable soup and bread. The results show that despite low iron content in the meals, which is not enough to meet daily iron requirements absorption was good in lunch possibly by the action of the promoters ascorbic acid (lemonade) and heme iron (cow tripe). Iron absorption in lunch was good and different from dinner and breakfast. We cannot conclude if the low iron absorption from bread is affected by coffee.

The contents of Ca, Cl, K, Mg and Na, in milk and milk with cereal, consumed by the peruvian children were determined by short irradiation INNA using RP-10 reactor, with a thermal flux of 10 13 ncm-2 s-1, and a pneumatical system. The comparative mcthod with solutions of primary standards of each element determined was used. The IAEA-A11-milk powder, IAEA-H4-Animal muscle and IAEA-V10-Hay powder, reference materials were periodically analyzed, together with the samples, in order to check the quality of analytical results.