Nutritional chemistry of chromium

There has been considerable progress in understanding the role of chromium in human nutrition. However, the lack of data on the forms of chromium-absorption from foods by the gastro-intestinal tract, and our concomitant inability to obtain an accurate assessment of the daily mobile pool of metabolically active chromium in the human body continues to be an impediment in assessing the overall impact of chromium nutrition. Based on recent chromium data on human tissues and body fluids available in the literature, an assessment of chromium content in different body compartments as well as in the total body is presented. However, on the analytical side, a few problems still persist and, therefore, a reliable analysis for chromium is restricted to a few selected laboratories.