A community health program must choose three minerals to target for dietary counseling given limited staff and local food patterns showing high sodium, low calcium, and low iron intakes. Which triage is most defensible based on classification and public health impact?

• A. Concentrate solely on increasing vitamin supplements because vitamins are always more cost-effective public health interventions than addressing mineral intakes even if local diets are deficient in basics like iron and calcium.
• B. Allocate all resources to promoting dietary sulfur intake since sulfur is a major mineral that replaces the need to address both calcium and iron deficiencies through improved protein consumption alone.
• C. Focus only on trace minerals because their physiological effects are typically more dramatic per milligram, excluding sodium and calcium entirely because the major/trace classification implies major minerals are less important to modify with dietary counseling.
• D. Target sodium (major mineral) to reduce hypertension risk, calcium (major mineral) to protect bone health, and iron (trace mineral) because of high prevalence and severe functional consequences of iron deficiency anemia in the community.

Answer: (D)