The effect of dietary fat on the glyceride structure of rat carcass fat

Carcass fats were obtained from weanling rats fed a complete diet for 8 weeks, which consisted of 2% cottonseed oil and 10% of the following fats: (1) corn oil; (2) the fatty acids of corn oil; (3) triricinolein; (4) ricinoleic acid; (5) the hydrogenated fatty acids of castor oil ; and (6) commercial hydrogenated shortening. The fats were subjected to both pancreatic lipase and nonspecific hydrolysis ; the resulting acids converted into methyl esters by conventional methods, and subjected to gas Chromatographie analysis. From these data, the positional distri-bution of the component fatty acids, glyceride types, and isomeric forms were calculated. The results indicated a preferential placement of un-saturated acids in the 2- position of the carcass triglycerides and that the carcass fat composition in terms of unsaturated (U) and saturated (S) fatty acid composition is not greatly influenced by the S and U compositions of the dietary fat. It was found that hydroxy acids or their tri-esters are metabolized much the same as are normal triglycerides and exert no particular in-fluence upon the fat structure of the rat. Some type of relationship between the dietary U and the U₃ in the carcass fat appears to be present. The glycerides of the carcass fats examined here are essentially a random mixture of the major glyceride types, but the isomeric forms (SUS, S SU, USU and UUS) are a definite non-random mixture. Carried out at the Food Res. Div., Armour & Co., and at The Burnsides Research Laboratory under research grant No. EF 225 from the National Institutes of Health, U. S. Public Health Service, and Deparmtent of Health, Education, and Welfare.