Effect of Dietary Fats on Glucose Tolerance and Alloxan Diabetes

¹ From the Yale Nutrition Laboratory, Department of Biochemistry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut

Effects of certain animal and vegetable fats, i.e. lard, butter, corn oil, coconut oil, cottonseed oil, margarine and Crisco, on glucose tolerance and on the toxic and diabetogenic action of alloxan have been investigated in experiments on rats. Experimental diets, containing 61.2% of the fats under test, were fed for 6, 7, 9 and 36 weeks and 14 months, respectively. In two long-term series, the hyperglycemia following glucose injection (1 gm/kg body weight, intraperitoneally) was more pronounced in groups fed margarine or Crisco diets than in animals receiving lard or butter diets. In the short-term series, the difference between these two groups of fats in the increase of blood sugar levels was not significant. The adverse effects of alloxan were also influenced by the type of fat in the diet; in one series both the incidence of diabetes and the mortality rate were higher in the corn oil group than in the butter- and coconut oil-fed groups; in another series only the mortality rate was affected.