Abstract
Daily intake of fatty acids and cholesterol in the diets of infants between the ages of 1 and 3 years were determined.
1. Fat was extracted from a homogenized diet with chloroform-methanol. Fatty acids were analyzed by capillary-FID-GC after trans-methylation. GC column used was a crosslinked PEG-20 M fused silica (30m×0.32mm i. d.). Cholesterol was measured by FID-GC equipped with 2% SE-30 and 2% OV-17 packed glass column (2m×3mm i. d.).
2. Daily fat intakes were approximately 30g for all ages.
3. The means of cholesterol intake were 187mg (one-year-old), 166mg (two-year-old), 145mg (three-year-old), however a large variance of individual samples was observed.
4. The ranges of daily fatty acid intake was 9-10g for saturated fatty acids and 15-17g for unsaturated fatty acids. The proportian of unsaturates in the total fatty acids was found to be small compared with the recommended saturate-to-unsaturate ratio (1: 2). The ratios of total poly-unsaturated fatty acid to saturated fatty acid in all the diets were calculated to be below 1.0; especially in 90% of the diets of one-year-old infants was below 0.6.
The ratios of total mono-unsaturated fatty acid to saturated fatty acid ranged from 0.8 to 1.5 in 90% of diets. In the diet of infants the percentage of C20: 5 (0.1%) and C22: 6 (0.4%) in the fatty acid composition were very low as compared with those of adult, because infants took fat not mainly from fish but mainly from egg, meat and milk.
5. From these results, in order to increase the poly-unsaturated fatty acid intake, vegetable-oil and fish should be consumed.
