Fat Soluble Vitamins

Archaeological Amerindian and Eskimo cranioskeletal size variation along coastal western North America: relation to climate, the reconstructed diet high in marine animal foods, and demographic stress

“…As previously reviewed [1,3,90], chronic hypervitaminosis D is known to exert a deleterious influence on the human skeleton, with growth arrest, osteoporosis and hypercalcemia being prominent symptoms, due in part to accelerated bone turnover [143 -145]. Seafoods as a class contain much vitamin D (calciferol), at levels ranging from trace amounts in certain shellfish to 10 5 international units (IU) %, and more, in the soft tissues, oils and blubber of marine mammals and fish [146][147][148][149][150][151][152][153][154][155][156][157][158][159][160][161][162]. Among a handful of quantitative nutritional surveys of Eskimo communities [150,152,155,158,161], Hoygaard's East Greenland study [152] is perhaps the most demonstrative of the very high levels of fat-soluble vitamins customarily ingested by indigenous maritime peoples of the Arctic.…”

“…In our reconstruction of SBC archaeodiets, it is implicit that most of the offal of larger fish prey, which contains a great deal of fat, was consumed, but not the bones. The fillet flesh portion of the rich marine fish just alluded to possesses substantial amounts of calciferol, on average 5-10 RDA%, but little vitamin A, around 0.1 RDA%; and the liver oils of these species bear concentrations that are in the range of acute toxicity [163] for humans, 320-1300 RDA% of vitamin A, 125-21000 RDA% of vitamin D [146,148,149]. Other details typical of the coastal Chumash foodway are found in the 'Plus Ca' compartment, which takes account of 'cactus foods' as well as of the fact that, by comparison with aboriginal Central California [1,2], roasting of meat and fish in wood fire and ashes and stone boiling of acorn mush were not the main cooking techniques of later prehistoric SBC peoples, who had been using soapstone griddles and cookpots imported from Santa Catalina Island for perhaps 1000 years before the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century.…”

“…Zooarchaeological evidence suggests that [184,194,197] at its highest development, the prehistoric mainland Chumash fishery exploited primarily the catch available year-round inshore and as far offshore as the kelp beds, with a definite preference for certain medium-size species such as the 20-cm-long white croaker, whose dimensions coincided nicely with the aboriginal gill net's stretch mesh of 4-5 cm. It should be mentioned that a not infrequent summer denizen of local shallow waters is the giant sea bass, whose remains have been identified in a number of SBC shellmounds [24,194,197]: the liver oil (13 -20% of organ weight) of this demersal fish captured by hook-and-line contains, on average, some 6000 RDA % of vitamin A, and 2500 RDA % of vitamin D [148,149]. The diet grid in Table A4 corresponds to our Series 3, SBa-46.M.…”

Retinol and α‐tocopherol concentrations in whole fish commonly fed in zoos and aquariums

“…Nutrient depletion during handling and storage of fish has been documented [Tan, 1962;Ikeda and Taguchi, 1966;Stoskopf, 19831, as have numerous case reports of nutritional deficiency disease(s) in captive piscivores [Wilson, 1972;Geraci and St. Aubin, 1979: Geraci, 1981: Wallach and Boever, 1983: Citino et al, 1985Alexander and Johnson, 19891. For these reasons, many zoos and aquariums routinely supplement diets of piscivorous species with vitamins A and E through the use of commercial or specialty vitamin mixtures [Bernard and Ullrey, 19891. Although extensive research has been conducted on the vitamin concentrations in fish liver oils and individual tissues [Higashi, 1961;Jacquot, 1961;Cruickshank, 1962;Ackman and Cormier, 19671, the published literature is focused on fish species and/or portions for human consumption. Thus available information is often not directly applicable to feeding captive animals, and few vitamin composition data of whole fish or natural diets are available for use in comparing or formulating supplementation regimens.…”

Tocopherols in Seafood and Aquaculture Products

“…On the other hand, during processing and frozen storage of seafood and aquaculture products, tocopherol concentrations decrease as lipid peroxidation progresses (Lall and Parazo, 1995). Regarding this subject, experiments have shown that fish oils, which contain high levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids, are much more prone to autooxidation phenomena the lower their tocopherol content (Cruickshank, 1962). Likewise, rancid and other unpleasant flavours rapidly lead to sensory rejection of fishery products whenever tissue tocopherol levels are low.…”