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The Use of Albino Mice to Determine the Utilization of the Calcium of Dehydrated Carrots and Cabbage

Department of Biological Chemistry, School of Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

The technique of the Sherman group for the determination of available calcium in vegetables using rats has been adapted to albino mice and, for our purposes, is considered to be superior as it results in a marked saving of space, time, materials and money in routine investigations of the availability of calcum of foodstuffs.

Litters of weanling albino mice at 20 days of age, in litter mate comparisons, were fed diets in which nearly all of the dietary calcium was derived from dried skim milk. The utilization values obtained were compared to those of similar diets in which up to one-half of the milk calcium was replaced by that of dehydrated vegetables, i.e., cabbage and carrots.

The mice utilized 45 ± 1.0% of the dietary calcium from the cabbage diet when one-half of the dried skim milk calcium was replaced by cabbage calcium as compared with a utilization of 58 ± 1.0% of the calcium from the control (20% dried skim milk) diet. When only 35% of the milk calcium was replaced by the vegetables tested, calcium utilizations of 48 ± 0.8% were obtained for the cabbage diet and 43 ± 0.4% for the carrot diet as compared with 58 ± 1.0% for the control diet.

The utilization of milk calcium was found to vary from 45 ± 1.1% at a 25% dried skim milk level (0.34% dietary calcium) to 86 ± 3.7% at a 10% skim milk level (0.17% dietary calcium).

There appeared to be a tendency for poorer utilization of dietary calcium as the age of the mice increased. A slightly poorer utilization by females was noted in the case of 2 females tested.

The data on total calcium content of albino mice showed values of about 0.3% at birth rising steadily to a little over 1% in adults, with no appreciable variation due to sex.

It was also apparent that weanling mice show a definitely lower utilization of dietary calcium than do weanling rats at a similar intake level.