A moment-by-moment comparsion of sucrose and saccharin drinking by the rat

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Abstract
Comparisons were made between the ingestion patterns in rats to a 0.2% sodium saccharin solution and to a 32% sucrose solution in both short-term (30 min, one solution only) and long-term (23 h, solution versus water) tests. The resolution of measurement in the short- and long-term tests was 0.5 and 30 s respectively. Analysis programs for both procedures allowed for a quantification of the ingestion patterns over time, showing details of the lick bursts in the short-term tests and ingestion bouts in the 23-h tests. Although the quantities of sucrose and saccharin consumed in the long-term tests were equal, the drinking patterns for water, saccharin and sucrose were markedly different during the three testing periods, (i) There were fewer drinking bouts to the sucrose than to the saccharin or water, (ii) The average bout of sucrose was much larger than the saccharin or water bouts, (iii) The inter-bout intervals for sucrose were much longer than those for saccharin, (iv) Nearly half of the sucrose intake occurred during the ‘lights-on’ portion of the 23-h drinking period as compared to less than one-third for saccharin or water, (v) Food intake when saccharin was present was equal to normal food intake when only water was available. However, in the presence of sucrose, the number and the size of feeding bouts decreased resulting in a 36% reduction in food intake. Similar results were found in the short-term tests when comparing sucrose and saccharin ingestion in that the quantities consumed were not reliably different, but the ingestion patterns were, (i) The rats had many more bursts of licking saccharin than sucrose, (ii) The saccharin bursts were much shorter than those for sucrose, (iii) Saccharin licking occurred off and on throughout the 30-min testing period while sucrose was consumed at a rapid rate at first and then terminated in 10–15 min from the period onset. Inferences about the different tastes of saccharin and sucrose to the rat arc drawn from the detailed pattern analyses.

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