Date of Award

1970

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Food and Nutritional Science

Department

Food and Nutritional Science

First Advisor

Henry A. Dymsza

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the safety for human dietary consumption of three synthetic compounds which are potential sources of dietary energy, namely 1, 3-Butylene Glycol (BG), 1, 3-Butylene Glycol Mono-Oleate (BGMO) and 1, 3-Butylene Glycol Mono-Stearate (BGMS), by feeding these compounds to parents and three generations of rats. Previous animal feeding studies had indicated that BG was low in toxicity, but the effects of BG on reproduction had not been adequately established. No relative studies were known of the physiological and toxicological effects of the BGMO and BGMS compounds. Control and test diets were composed of semi-purified ingredients, with the only difference being that 20% of the test compounds were added to the experimental diets at the expense of carbohydrate sources. Thus, all diets contained the same amount of casein, fat, vitamins and minerals. The most significant findings of this study were that BG and BGMS diets supported reproduction and lactation in three generations of rats with fed the control or the BGMO diets. Food consumption and weight grains were generally higher for animals fed the control diet which furnished the least amount of calories.

The fact that food efficiencies were essentially the same for all diets indicated that the test compounds were well utilized. All diets resulted in a low incidence of mortality and few pathological lesions, although more of both occurred in the BGMS group. The blood serum clinical tests and the histopathological evaluation of tissues essentially revealed no evidence that the compounds were toxic, except for some increase of lipid accumulation in liver tissues of males fed BGMS which may be of importance and could be further investigated.

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