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The Effect of Cereal Diets on the Composition of the Body Fat of the Rat¹

Department of Physiological Chemistry, Yale University, New Haven

The cereal grains, corn, oats, wheat and barley, each of which has a low oil content, were included in individual diets of rats to furnish 82 per cent of the total energy value of the ration. The oil of corn and oats, constituting 4.0 per cent and 5.3 per cent, respectively, of the grains, supplied 8.0 and 10.0 per cent of the total calories of the corn and oats rations, respectively. Body fat produced by corn- and oats-fed rats, differed slightly in degree of unsaturation as measured by the iodine number (83 and 79, respectively). The oil of wheat and barley constituting 1.7 per cent and 2.0 per cent of the respective grains, supplied only 3.0 and 4.0 per cent of the total energy value of the respective wheat and barley diets. Body fat yielded by animals fed wheat and barley rations was less unsaturated (I.N. 70 and 71, respectively) than fat produced on either corn or oats diets, and was similar in character to fat obtained from rats fed ‘fat-free’ diets. As a result of a study of the total saturated and total unsaturated fatty acids of body fat obtained from rats on each cereal ration, the unsaturated fatty acid content was found to range from about 68.5 per cent for fat from those fed the barley diet to 75.0 per cent for fat of rats on the corn ration.

² National research council fellow in medicine (1931–1932).

Manuscript received 5 July 1935.