VITAMINS IN BUTTER.

Putaruru Press, Volume XI, Issue 510, 23 February 1933, Page 6

VITAMINS IN BUTTER.

REPORTS BY SCIENTISTS. Effect of Cold Storage. I Writing in the London Observer, a s medical correspondent says:— s The presence of vitamins A and D j in butter depends upon various fac- i tors, including the diet supplied to the > cows and the amount of sunlight ] available at the time of year when the • butter is prepared. Now, since but- i ter at its best cannot rival cod liver i oil as a source of these two important vitamins (A for growth and prevention of infection, D for prevention of rickets) ft follows that during the “ winter months butter produced in this country may fail to provide the body i with the minimum requirements of fat-soluble vitamins, since sunlight is I deficient and the usual winter rations for the cows consist of cereals and roots instead of fresh green fodder. A recent report issued by the Medical Research Council shows that this danger can be averted by using Australian and New Zealand butter in the winter months. The research workers responsible for this report, Miss M. E. F. Crawford, Miss E. O. V. Perry and Dr. S. S. Zilva, have left nothing to chance, and in a scries of elaborate dietic experiments they have proved that butter imported from the southern Dominions shows a high and uniform potency in vitamins A and D. “They are equal in this respect,” says the report, “to the best summer butters produced at home, and even to the butter made, from the milk of cows whose diet has been fortified by an artificial supply of the vitamins.” The breed of the dairy herd appears to have very little influence on the vitamin content of the butters, and butters from different parts of Australia were found to be closely equivalent in value. It is of great importance that these vitamins in butter have a remarkable degree of stability during cold storage. Not only is there no appreciable loss of potency during the weeks of transit by sea, but in several cases no notable loss could be detected even up to periods of two years. It also made no difference whether the butters were stored in small or large bulk, nor did it matter whether the butter had been ; prepared from sweet or acid cream. The neutralisation of acid cream before churning, such as practised in Australia and New Zealand, appears to have no destructive effect upon the vitamin A and D contents of the resulting butter. From a practical standpoint these results are very satisfactory, especially as the proportion of the United Kingdom imports of butter from the Southern Dominions have been steadily rising, and reached 44 per cent, last year. During the summer months English butter at its best is all that can be required for providing these two vitamins, but in winter the alternative supply here described is obviously a most valuable safeguard and cannot be rivalled by any similar source in the northern hemisphere.