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Calcium and Phosphorus Retention in Growth, in Relation to the form of Carbohydrate in the Food

Department of Chemistry, Columbia University, New York City

The experiments here reported were planned to ascertain whether calcium and phosphorus retentions in the normal, growing young mammal are essentially alike or different when different forms of carbohydrate are added to an otherwise identical adequate diet.

In order that the experiments should constitute a sufficiently rigorous test of the question, each form of carbohydrate studied was mixed with twice its weight of the control diet (diet B or diet 13 of this laboratory, a mixture of two-thirds ground whole wheat and one-third dried whole milk; fed with table salt and distilled water). Thus in the experimental diets the tissue-building nutrients were diluted in all cases to the same extent; and to such extent as to make these diets some-what less than optimal though still adequate to support body growth and skeletal development within the normal range.

Under these conditions it was found that calcium retention (and also that phosphorus retention) was essentially alike whether the carbohydrate was added to the diet in the form of dextrose (corn sugar), spray-dried corn sirup (mixture of dextrose, maltose and dextrin), dextrin, cornstarch or sucrose.

The experimental animals were albino rats bred in the laboratory. Their ages were exactly known, as were the nutritional histories both of the experimental animals and the families from which they came. The periods of experimental feeding began at the age of 4 weeks and were ended by killing and analyzing the animals at the age of 60 days, at which age any difference in calcification, which might have resulted from the difference in form of carbohydrate fed, should have been most readily demonstrable.

Within the limits of experimental error, calcium utilization was alike on the experimental diets containing the different forms of carbohydrate.

The ratio of calcium to phosphorus found in the body was also essentially the same for the animals which had received the different experimental diets.

Moreover, although growth and calcium retention were (designedly, as explained above) somewhat less rapid on the experimental diets than on the control diet, the percentages of calcium and of phosphorus in the bodies at the completion of the test were essentially the same for the animals on the experimental diets as for those of the same age on the control diet.

This latter fact constitutes added evidence that the level of calcium intake provided in the experimental periods was well adapted to the purpose of affording a rigorous test of the efficiency of the normal retention of calcium and phosphorus under the influence of these different diets.