Carnitine Contents in Various Foods

Abstract

Carnitine is known to play a key role in the metabolism of free fatty acids in mitochondria. Recently it has been established that the content of serum carnitine is reduced in patients with abnormal fat metabolism or malnutrition. Moreover, β-oxidation is inhibited in ischemic myocardium and a clinical administration of carnitine is reported to have favorable effects on patients with ischemic heart disease. From these facts, it is considered to be physiologically most preferable to intake carnitine from daily foods and to keep the normal fatty acid metabolism. In this paper, quantitative analyses of the contents of free carnitine (FC), short-chain carnitine (SC), long-chain carnitine (LC) and total carnitine (TC) in daily foods were performed by Pearson's method using acetylcarnitine transferase.
Little carnitine was contained in vegetable foods, except for avocados which contained 7.7mg% FC and 12.2mg% TC. The FC/TC ratios in animal foods used in this experiment were assured to be between 50% and 80% with some exceptions. Among marine products, muscle of Broughton's ribbed arks (akagai) had the highest contents of FC (134.4mg%) and TC (175.4mg%). High contents of carnitine were also detected from other muscular products such as shell ligaments (kaibashira), squids (moika) or prawns (kurumaebi). Fish with white flesh or Pacific saucy (sanma) showed comparatively low content of carnitine. Among meats, the highest content of carnitine was detected from beef (rump) followed by salami, pork and ham. The content of carnitine in milk was very low. Little carnitine was detected from milk made from beans, and none from eggs.