DIGESTIBILITY OF SOME ANIMAL PATS. 5 



reasonable accuracy. It was not considered necessary to determine 

 variations in the body weight of the subjects, as the purpose of the 

 investigations was to ascertain the availability to the body of the 

 particular fats in question rather than to supply a diet of sufficient 

 nutritive and energy value to meet the body needs. All analytical 

 determinations were made according to the methods outlined by the 

 Association of Official Agricultural Chemists. 1 The resultant data 

 only are included in the report of the experiments which follow. The 

 dates of the individual tests and all the detailed data not essential 

 in interpreting the results are on file at the Department of Agricul- 

 ture, where they may be consulted. 



DIGESTION EXPERIMENTS. 



LARD. 



Pork fat is utilized for food in a variety of forms, the most common 

 of which are bacon, salt and fresh fat pork, and lard. Lard is used 

 principally for frying and for shortening foods, though sometimes 

 flavored with sweet herbs and spread on bread, like "drippings." 



In view of the wide use of lard as a food material, it is noteworthy 

 that no very extensive study of its digestibility has been found on 

 record. 



Rubner 2 determined the digestibility of bacon, making two exper- 

 iments in which 100 and 200 grams were eaten daily, and found an 

 average digestibility of 87 per cent. This obviously is not a true 

 value, since he reports that the feces contained small pieces of bacon 

 which had not been disintegrated. 



Work concerning fat resorption by man and animals in patholog- 

 ical conditions was carried out by Adler. 3 His study of pork fat 

 seemed to warrant the conclusion that in pathological conditions 

 cooked bacon was more readily absorbed than raw bacon. 



Grindley et al., 4 in a study of the influence of different methods of 

 cooking upon the thoroughness and ease of digestion of meat, have 

 reported four experiments with fat fresh pork, the fat of which was 

 99.4 per cent digested. 



In a number of tests comparing the digestibility of lard with that 

 of some other animal fats, Levites 5 found that lard was somewhat 

 less thoroughly assimilated than butter and beef fat, from which he 

 concluded that lard possesses a laxative property. 



Moore," in conducting experiments to determine the digestibility 

 of sonic of the more common fats, found that about 97 per cent of 



• U. 8. Dept. Agr., Bur. Cheat, Bnl. LOT (1912). 

 •zi chr. Biol., 16 (1879), No. 1, pp. 170 17 1. 



• Ztschr. Klin. Med., 86 (1908), No. 8 I, pp. 802 316. 



i U. S. Dept. Agr., Office Expt.l las. Bui. 193 (1907), p. 41. 



/. I i Ph lol. ' hem., 19 (1900), No. 2-3, pp. 273-286. 

 « Arkansas Sla. Bui. 78(1903), m>. 88-41. 



