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Self-Selection of a High Calcium Diet by Vitamin D—Deficient Lactating Rats Increases Food Consumption and Milk Production¹

Department of Biochemistry, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706

Lactating and nonlactating rats, both deficient and replete in chole-calciferol, were allowed a free selection among three diets containing 0.47% Ca, 0.3% P (normal Ca, normal P diet); 2.0% Ca, 0.3% P (high Ca diet); and 0.47% Ca, 1.0% P (high P diet). An additional group of vitamin D—deficient lactating rats was fed only the normal Ca, normal P diet. Vitamin D—deficient rats showed a strong selection preference for the high Ca diet but avoided the high P diet, whereas cholecalciferol-replete rats consumed the normal Ca, normal P diet predominantly. Compared to the nonselecting rats, the selection of the high Ca diet by the lactating rats deficient in vitamin D resulted in an increase in plasma calcium levels, hypophosphatemia, a doubling of food consumption, a reduction in maternal body weight loss and a stimulation of milk production as indicated by pup growth. These results demonstrate that vitamin D—deficient rats select a high Ca diet and that the decrease in milk production found in vitamin D deficiency results from a decrease in food consumption and that this anorexia is at least partially dependent on the hypocalcemia normally occurring in vitamin D deficiency.

KEY WORDS: • vitamin D • lactation • dietary self-selection

¹ This work was supported by a Program Project Grant No. AM-14881 and a Postdoctoral Training Grant, No. AM-06374 (R. B.) from the National Institute of Arthritis, Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health and by the Harry Steenbock Research Fund of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

² No reprints will be available from the authors.

Manuscript received 7 November 1983.