Abstract
A new vitamin-free synthetic diet for rats was devised, which consists of sucrose 65,purified frozen-dried bean curd 30,McCollum's salt mixture 4,DL-methionine 0.4 and vitamin mixture 1.0. Commercial frozen-dried bean curd contains 25-30% fat, 45-60% of protein and 0.5% of fibre, and is purified by three times boiling water extraction. In the feeding experiment with the synthetic diet, the rats of thiamine or riboflavin deficiency died within a month, while those of vitamin B_6,B_<12> or pantothenic acid deficiency were alive for a month, though the growth rates were inferior to the control ones.
