Studies of the Comparative Nutritive Value of Fats

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Abstract
Rats prefer a diet of mineralized, vitamin fortified skimmed milk powder containing butter to one where the fat is corn, cottonseed, olive, peanut or soybean oil, or margarine. The preference is apparently associated with flavor. The animals universally preferred a margarine or peanut oil diet containing 4 parts per million of diacetyl to an unflavored diet, also, this low level in general is preferred to 8, 16 or 24 parts per million of diacetyl. Commercial butter flavor is favored over diacetyl. It is concluded that flavor may play an important role in determining food consumption of diets which are satisfactory from a nutritional standpoint. Although this would not be consistently demonstrated in all animals with flavored and unflavored margarine or peanut oil diets, two-thirds of the rats consistently chose in a ratio of 4 to 1 the flavored diet while no preference was evident in the remaining animals between the two diets. In no case was there a consistent preference for the unflavored diet.