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Nutritional Value of Plant Materials

VIII. Lactation Failure of Rats Fed Diets Containing Purified Soybean Proteins^1,2,

One Figure

Division of Agricultural Biochemistry, University of Minnesota, St. Paul

1. The feeding to rats of rations containing salts and components of synthetic and plant origin, including certain preparations of purified soybean protein, leads to a high pre-weaning mortality of the young.

2. The cause of this pre-weaning mortality of the young appears to be lactation failure.

3. The nutritional deficiency cannot be corrected by curative or prophylactic feeding of vitamin B₁₂. Crude soybean oil meal added to the maternal diet at parturition has a curative effect.

4. The nature of the factor or factors responsible for this deficiency is unknown. Great variations have been encountered in the extent to which commercial preparations of soybean protein can be purified so as to establish this dietary deficiency.

5. Rats have been maintained on purified rations containing salts and components of synthetic and plant origin for 10 filial generations without evidence of functional impairment except for a high incidence of lactation failure.

6. A partial threonine deficiency of the maternal diet was responsible for subnormal weaning weights of the young and for a marked loss of weight of mothers during lactation.

² A preliminary report of these studies was presented at the 18th International Physiological Congress, Copenhagen, August 15, 1950. Abstracts of Communications, 18th International Physiological Congress, page 440.

Manuscript received 21 August 1952.