Self-selection trials of wheat and chickpea based weaning foods on weanling rats

摘要

Weaning foods based on malted wheat and malted chickpea (MWF), popped wheat and popped chickpea (PWF) and roller dried blend of wheat and chickpea (RWF) were formulated. The foods contained 16.0 - 17.5% protein, 1.6-3.5% fat about 65% available carbohydrates and 9.5-10.4% dietary fibre. The PWF and RWF were blended with 5% barley malt flour, is a source of amylases, to prepare low bulk popped (PWFM) and roller dried (RWFM) foods. The preferential intake of the diets of the low bulk and the high bulk foods by the weanling rats were determined by providing them with more than one diet at a time, in the 'pair' and 'multiple' choice feeding trials in the 'pair' choice, a group of animals had access to 2 diets, namely, a high and a low bulk food (PWF and PWFM or RWF and RWFM), whereas, in the 'multiple' choice, the animals had access to all the 5 foods (MWF, PWF PWFM, RWF AND RWFM) at any given-time. The energy density of feed prepared from MWF, RWFM, PWFM, RWF and PWFM diets was 1.7, 1.6, 1.5, 0.6 and 0.5 kcal/ml, respectively. After 3 week's experimental period, it was observed that, the animals consumed both the diets in the pair choice and all the diets in multiple choice trials, but the intake of the low bulk foods was higher by 27 and 62% than the high bulk foods in the pair and multiple choice feeding trials, respectively. While, weight gain by the animals having acces to RWF and RWFM was 44.2 g, PWF and PWFM was 46.2 g, it was 52.2 g in the case of animals having access to all 5 diets. The study showed that the weanling rats prefer low bulk foods to high bulk foods and gain more weight when the animals have access to multiple diets.