Turning Meat, Poultry, Eggs, and Dairy Products into Nutraceuticals, Part Three: The Literature of Animal Nutrition Approaches to Increasing Conjugated Linoleic Acid Levels in Eggs, Fluid Milk, Cheese, Yogurt, and Butter as a Part of a Value-Added Functional Foods Strategy

Abstract

In the first of this three-part series of articles, the debate in the clinical literature over the reality or extent of particular positive health benefits of a putative nutraceutical, conjugated linoleic acids (CLAs), in human subjects was reviewed. In the second part, we explored the means by which animal scientists and farmers—responding as much to annual sales in the hundreds of millions of dollars in health food stores of seed oil capsules rich in CLAs, as opposed to any conclusive clinical science—are aggressively pursuing ways to feed livestock and fowl that would naturally increase the concentration of CLAs per conventional consumer dietary portions of beef, lamb, goat, pork, and broiler chicken meat so as to be to be marketed as functional foods. In this third and final installment, animal nutrition means of enhancing CLAs in eggs and in fluid milk, cheese, yogurts, and butter are recorded. As in the prior parts of this series, the core journals covering this third chapter in the CLA research story are identified for agricultural and food science librarians.

KEYTERMS:

• animal nutrition
• animal science
• cheese
• concentrates
• conjugated linoleic acids
• cows
• dairy products
• eggs
• fodder
• functional foods
• goats
• human nutrition
• milk
• nutraceuticals
• oilseeds
• pasture
• sheep
• silage
• small ruminants
• yogurt