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Effects of Increasing the Calcium Content of a Diet in Which Calcium is One of the Limiting Factors

Two Figures

Department of Chemistry, Columbia University, New York City

As part of an investigation to explain the improvement of an already adequate diet, the effect of such addition of calcium carbonate as to increase the calcium content of the dry food mixture from 0.2 per cent to 0.35 per cent has been studied with rats throughout the natural life cycle and through successive generations.

This enrichment of calcium intake was followed by a more efficient utilization of the food (whether calculated on the basis of its energy value or protein content); better growth; earlier maturity; several indications of higher adult vitality; a longer period between the attainment of maturity and the onset of senility; and, in less degree, an increase in the average length of adult life, or life expectation of the adult.

Inasmuch as the infant mortality was decreased by the increase in calcium intake, the life expectation at birth was increased in greater degree than the life expectation of the adult.

That the increase of the adult life cycle was not so large with the females as with the males may be due to the fact that the females on the higher calcium intake had borne and suckled more young.

The increase in the calcium content of the already adequate diet clearly improved its nutritive value as judged by the combined. criteria of growth, adult vitality, lowered death rates, and increased length of life.

We conclude that the previously reported improvement of an already adequate food supply is in part (though not solely) attributable to the enrichment of the calcium intake, and that the level of calcium intake most conducive to optimal well-being is significantly higher than that required for normal growth and maintenance.

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