Metabolic and Anatomic Adaptations in Chickens “Trained” to Eat Their Daily Food in Two Hours

Abstract

INTRODUCTION THE SCIENCE of nutrition was greatly advanced when Brobeck (1946) showed that the obesity observed in rats with hypothalamic lesions was the consequence of overeating. Tepperman et al. (1943) obtained evidence showing that the excess food that was eaten was rapidly converted to fat as shown by the R. Q., which rose above 1.00. These investigators showed further that normal rats will also show high R. Q.'s similar to those of the hypothalamic rats when they are induced to eat large amounts of food in a short time. They accomplished this by “training” the rats to eat their total daily food intake in one hour. This “trained” feeding technique proved to be useful in nutritional studies and has been used extensively in this laboratory with rats and chickens. This “trained” feeding technique set up abnormal feeding schedules and presented many problems. Tepperman and Tepperman (1958) found it necessary to …