The present study was undertaken to investigate the nutritive value of various defatted oil-seed flours in the diet by studying the effect of alternative diets on growing rats, to attention growth, food intake, weight of organs and the levels of total cholesterol, phospholipid and triglyceride in serum and liver tissue.
Sixty male Albino rats (Splague Dowley) weighing 47-55 g were divided into five experimental groups and one control group of ten each, and were fed for 24 weeks with the respective diets. Each of five different diets was supplemented with defatted flours as dietary protein sources.
Four of other diets were composed of 7.5 sesame seed, rapeseed, sunflower seed and cottonseed flour respectively, with the same amount of defatted soybean flour, while the fifth diet tested was prepared with 15% soybean flour.
The results of this study were as follows.
1) It was noteworthy that the five defatted oilseed flour diets demonstrated much improvement of nutritive value. Sesame seed flour and sunflower seed flour, especially appeared to be worthwhile as human foods.
2) From the results of biochemical tests of the serum and liver lipid content of Albino rats, after feeding with the respective diets, it can be concluded that, from a nutritional point of view, the toxic effects of oilseed flours like rapeseed and cottonseed flour, which contain toxic substances, are reduced when they are mixed with soybean flour.
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