Large changes in food intake in diabetic rats fed high-fat and low-fat diets

Groups of male Sprague-Dawley rats were predominantly fed either a high-fat or a high-carbohydrate (CHO) diet. For designated 2-day periods, their diets were switched. After baseline measurements of food and water intake, the rats were made diabetic by injections of either 40 or 46–50 mg/kg streptozotocin. Food and water intake gradually increased over a 15-day period for rats on the CHO diet. Whenever the diets were switched, many of the rats showed large changes in food and fluid intake. Body weight showed a gradual decline, but the rats retained half of the dissectable abdominal body fat at sacrifice. Measurements of plasma glucose, insulin and glucagon proved that the rats were diabetic. The changes in average food intake were reasonably consistent with the “utilizable fuel” theory for the control of food intake [9,10] assuming that the CHO component of each diet was non-utilizable. The distribution of the fat/CHO utilizable fuel ratio in both experiments was flat and non-normal showing that some rats ate as much of the high fat diet as the high CHO diet. Other rats tended to avoid the high fat to an extent that was greater than predicted by the theory, suggesting that the fat diet may have caused malaise. Thus, the individual rat data did not provide strong support for the “utilizable fuel” theory.