Fatty acid composition of two different muscles in rabbits: alterations in response to saturated or unsaturated dietary fatty acid complementation

Abstract

Two experiments were carried out to determine differences in the fatty acid profile of two rabbit muscles, longissimus dorsi (l.d.) and vastus latera/is (v.l.). Fatty acid analysis was carried out by gas chromatography on the samples of ten 8-week-old rabbits, in the first experiment after a 4-week feeding period with a commercial pelleted diet, to obtain information about possible differences. In the second experiment 4-week treatments were performed with two high-fat experimental feeds, from which one was complemented with a saturated animal fat source (FAT) and the other with an unsaturated fat source, full-fat soya (SOYA). Samples were obtained from eighteen 8-week-old rabbits per diet. With the commercial diet, significant differences were evidenced between the 2 muscles for C14:0, C18:1 (20.9 and 17.5 % for l.d. and v.l.), C18:2 n-6 (24.5 and 27.9 % for l.d. and v.l.) and C20:4 (n-6). On average C16:0 proportion was 26.8 %, that of C18:0 was 8.5% and that of C18:3 (n-3) was 2.32 %. After FAT feeding C14:0, C16:1, C18:0, C18:1, C18:2(n-6) and C20:4 were found to differ. SOYA feeding caused alterations in C14:0, C16:0, C18:0, C18:1 and C18:3. With SOYA feeding proportion of C18:2 increasesd up to 35 % in both muscles.