Vitamins in Canned Puerto Rican Fruit Juices and Nectars

Abstract

The ascorbic acid, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, and folic acid contents of commercial canned juices or nectars of apricot, grapefruit, guava, guava-pineapple, mango, orange, papaya, peach, pear, pineapple, pineapple-orange, soursop, tamarind, and tomato were determined by chemical or microbiological procedures. The vitamin content of the same product and trade label from can to can was generally in good agreement for riboflavin, thiamine, and niacin, but the agreements were not as good for ascorbic and folic acid. Orange juice had the highest content of ascorbic acid, tomato juice of riboflavin, niacin, and folic acid, respectively, and pineapple juice of thiamine. However, the thiamine content of tomato juice was just slightly below that of pineapple juice. The nectars in general exhibited values well below those of the juices; particularly poor in the above vitamins were apricot, pear, peach, tamarind, and soursop nectars.