Physiological effects of isocaloric and mineral deficient maternal mouse diets on offspring growth and body composition

Abstract

Over the last 30 years, researchers have evaluated the various effects of feeding maternal high fat diets on the health of the offspring of various species, but mainly in rodents. Our hypothesis was that dietary source and amount of energy in maternal mouse diets would induce physiological, growth, and body composition changes in offspring independently of maternal body weight. The objective of this study was to evaluate the changes in body weight and composition from feeding maternal isocaloric diets on mouse offspring (1 generation). Parent mice were weaned and fed one of 3 diets consisting of either low fat with controlled calories based on prior ad libitum mouse experiment measurements (LFr), high fat diets restricted in calories to match the low fat diet (HFr), or high fat ad libitum (HFa) diets. Offspring from the first generation were fed either low fat ad libitum (LFa) or high fat ad libitum (HFa) diets and randomly assigned to four different dietary treatment groups: 1) dams fed LFr and offspring fed LFa (LFr:LFa) diets, 2) dams fed LFr and offspring fed HFa (LFr:HFa) diets, 3) dams fed HFr and offspring fed HFa (HFr:HFa) diets, and 4) dams fed HFa and offspring fed HFa (HFa:HFa) diets. Average weekly body weight and composition of offspring was determined for each of the four dietary treatments. Unfortunately, the experimental diets obtained from the manufacturer were severely deficient in all of the essential macro and micro minerals, which resulted in high pup mortality and prevented testing of the original hypothesis. Overall, both dams and offspring fed the LF diet had the greatest body weight gain and average percentage of body fat mass compared with those fed the other dietary treatments. In conclusion, feeding the mineral deficient diets confounded the effects of dietary calorie source and consumption on developmental programming in mice.