The Effect of Dietary Fat on the Reproductive Performance and the Mixed Fatty Acid Composition of Fat-Deficient Rats

Abstract

Female rats which had grown to maturity on a fat-free diet, and bred, gave birth to young which were born dead or died soon after birth. When this diet was supplemented with 5% hydrogenated fat, the animals gave birth to living young which did not live more than 72 hours, while those fed 5% corn oil weaned 85% of their young. Total fat analyses of representative female rats and their newly born young indicated that the animals which had been kept on the fat-free diet were deficient in arachidonic acid and not deficient in fat per se. The largest differences occurred in the phospholipid fraction of the fat extracted from the young. The phospholipids of the young from animals which had received corn oil contained from 5 to 10, and those from animals on hydrogenated fat two, times more arachidonic acid than those from rats on the fat-free diet.