Vitamins in milk

In following the controversy over vitamins in milk, I have been aided by having many of Osborne and Mendel s records, ideas, manuscripts and correspondence at hand, thanks to the historical tradition at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. Perhaps the Hopkins papers (such as exist) would enable me to solve the quantitative relations issue but, as stated earlier, I do not think it will ever be solved. 

Milk contains significant concentrations of fat-soluble vitamins (Table 3.5, Figure 3.4) and milk and dairy products make a significant contribution to the dietary requirements for these vitamins in Western countries. The actual form of the fat-soluble vitamins in milk appears to be uncertain and their concentration varies widely with breed of animal, feed and stage of lactation, e.g. the vitamin A activity of colostrum is c. 30 times higher than that of mature milk. 

Oste, R., Jagerstad, M. and Andersson I. (1997) Vitamins in milk and milk products, in Advanced Dairy Chemistry, Vol. 3 Lactose, Water, Salts and Vitamins (ed. P.F. Fox), Chapman Hall, London, pp. 347-402. 

Many of the vitamins in milk are relatively heat labile, as discussed in Chapter 6. 

Gregory, M. E. 1975. Water-soluble vitamins in milk and milk products. J. Dairy Res. 42, 197-216. 

Hartman, A. M. and Dryden, L. P. 1965. Vitamins in Milk and Milk Products. American Dairy Science Association, Champaign, 111. 

Fundamentals of Dairy Chemistry has always been a reference text which has attempted to provide a complete treatise on the chemistry of milk and the relevant research. The third edition carries on in that format which has proved successful over four previous editions (Fundamentals of Dairy Science 1928, 1935 and Fundamentals of Dairy Chemistry 1965, 1974). Not only is the material brought up-to-date, indeed several chapters have been completely re-written, but attempts have been made to streamline this edition. In view of the plethora of research related to dairy chemistry, authors were asked to reduce the number of references by eliminating the early, less significant ones. In addition, two chapters have been replaced with subjects which we felt deserved attention Nutritive Value of Dairy Foods and Chemistry of Processing. Since our society is now more attuned to the quality of the food it consumes and the processes necessary to preserve that quality, the addition of these topics seemed justified. This does not minimize the importance of the information in the deleted chapters, Vitamins of Milk and Frozen Dairy Products. Some of the material in these previous chapters has been incorporated into the new chapters furthermore, the information in these chapters is available in the second edition, as a reprint from ADSA (Vitamins in Milk and Milk Products, November 1965) or in the many texts on ice cream manufacture. 

MM Delgado Zamarreno, A Sanchez Perez, MC Gomez Perez, J Hernandez Mendez. Directly coupled sample treatment—high-performance liquid chromatography for on-line automatic determination of liposoluble vitamins in milk. J Chromat A 694 399-406, 1995. 

Hartman, A.M., and Dryden, L.P. 1965. Vitamins in milk and milk products. Am. Dairy Sci. Assoc. Champaign, IL. 

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