The Vitamin B6 Content of Milk Products

Conversion of pyridoxine into 6-hydroxypyridoxine by food components, especially ascorbic acid.

“…Vitamin B6 is present in a wide variety of foods. Food processing and storage reduce the content of biologically available vitamin B6 in animal foods and dehydrated model food systems (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8). This effect is attributable to decomposition of vitamin B6 or to interactions of vitamin B6 with proteins, amino acids and reducing sugars to form complexes of limited bioavailability.…”

Degradation and Binding to Food Proteins of Vitamin B‐6 Compounds During Thermal Processing

“…In view of the previously documented greater stability of PN under such conditions (Hassinen et al, 1954;Gregory and Hiner, 1983), a clearer difference in retention probably would be observed in longer processing treatments.…”

“…The relative stability of the B-6 vitamers during the thermal processing of milk products and aqueous model systems has been examined extensively (Hassinen et al, 1954;Hodson, 1956;Chapman et al, 1957;Gregory, 1959;Navankasattusas and Lund, 1982;Gregory and Hiner, 1983). The vitamin B-6 activity of canned beef liver and boned chicken muscle, as determined by rat bioassay, was found to be 29 and 57%, respectively, compared to frozen controls (Richardson et al, 1961).…”

Chemical Changes of Vitamins during Food Processing

“…The differing relative stability properties of the various B6 compounds have been of interest since the initial observation that the fortification of milk products with PN yielded greater retention of total vitamin B6 activity than that observed for the naturally occurring B6 compounds of milk (Hassinen et al 1954). Navankasattusas and Lund (1982) examined the thermal stability of individual vitamin B6 compounds in neutral phosphate buffer solutions and reported, as expected, that PN exhibited the greatest stability.…”