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Growth Performance and Intestinal Transit Time of Rats Fed Purified and Natural Dietary Fibers¹

Department of Nutritional Sciences, 119 Morgan Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720

The effects of some selected purified fibers were compared to those derived from cereals or legume seeds. Rats were fed for at least 9 weeks and measurements were taken to determine feed consumption, weight gain, feed efficiency ratios (FER), protein efficiency ratios (PER), apparent protein digestibility, and rate of transit through the gastrointestinal tract. Most diets were designed to contain approximately 10% dietary fiber and 10% protein. Compared to the fiber-free diet, pectin reduced weight gain, FER, PER and apparent protein digestibility values. Cellulose, xylan and raffinose had no influence on feed intake, weight gains or FERs. However, cellulose and xylan increased PER values and the rates of food passage but decreased the apparent protein digestibility values. Feed utilization, protein digestibility and growth were similar for the wheat bran, corn bran and fiber-free diets. These cereal fibers caused the rates of transit to be significantly increased relative to the fiber-free control diet. The hull and cell-wall-fiber fractions of beans, when compared to the fiber-free diet, had little effect on feed consumption, growth, FER or PER. The cell-wall-fiber fraction reduced apparent protein digestibility and the hull fraction accelerated food passage relative to the fiber-free diet.

KEY WORDS: • rats • fibers • growth • transit time

¹ Funds were supplied by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Co-operative Agreement No. 12-14-5001-290 and by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Experiment Station grant No. 58-9AHZ-596.

Manuscript received 23 August 1982.