Ingested fat and body fat as precursors of the acetone bodies

Abstract

An experiment was carried out to determine whether body fat and ingested fat give rise to equal amounts of the acetone bodies. A normal woman took a diet which furnished twenty per cent. more calories than her calculated basal requirement, and which consisted of 45 grams of protein, 45 grams of carbohydrate, and 160 grams of fat. The excretion of aceto-acetic acid, β-hydroxybutyic acid, and nitrogen were determined daily by methods previously described 1 The amounts of the acetone bodies excreted were ten to twenty times the amounts excreted by the subject when she was on a normal diet, but the total amounts (0.25 grams of acetone from all of the acetone bodies) were small. The diet used should not have caused any excretion of acetone if Shaffer's formula 2 is applied; the combustion of varying mixtures of ketogenic and antiketogenic compounds in different parts of the organism and at different times during the day will probably give rise to such amounts of acetone as these when the total amount of antiketogenic material is somewhat in excess of the ketogenic.

After six days on the diet described the fat was discontinued for three days, and the same amounts of protein and carbohydrate were fed as before. During this time body fat was presumably burned to replace the fat omitted from the diet. The diet fed at the beginning of the experiment was then resumed for a period of two days. There were no differences in the amounts of acetoaecetic acid, β-hydroxybutyric acid, and nitrogen excreted in the three periods. Samples of blood taken before breakfast before the experiment began, after six days on the high fat diet, and after three days on the low fat diet contained the same amounts of cholesterol (determined by the method of Bloor 3 and of fat (determined by the methods of Bloor 4 and of Gage 5 .