Standard Natural Ingredient Diets

Teklad standard natural ingredient diets are available for many species used in research.

Standard natural ingredient diets fulfill many everyday needs of laboratory animal colonies for breeding, growth and maintenance. These diets consist of relatively unrefined agricultural commodities such as grains, grain by-products, concentrated plant protein sources, animal proteins, and vitamins, minerals and fats.

Diets by species:

When carefully chosen, standard natural ingredient diet will support many research objectives.

Teklad Global Diets^® : From formulations for rodent diets to a variety of other species, Teklad Global Diets are the world’s leading laboratory animal diets designed to minimize diet variability – while meeting modern research needs by using appropriate ingredient and nutrient levels for a particular species.

Traditional diets: These are older formulas that support nutrient needs. However, traditional diets were not designed with the needs of modern science and research endpoints in mind, particularly with respect to rodent diets.

Note: Standard natural ingredient diets may also be referred to simply as “standard,” “grain-based,” or “chow.”

Natural ingredients are chemically complex, containing a variety of nutritive and non-nutritive components, both of which can have significant effects on your research. We work to minimize variation in nutrient and non-nutrient levels through the combination of:

Ingredient selection,
Fixed formulation coupled with rigorous ingredient control, and
Automated and controlled manufacturing processes.

With this high-quality production process, you can expect more consistent results.

Selecting ingredients for a diet is an important step. In our Teklad Global Rodent Diets , soybean meal is reduced or excluded in order to lower or minimize isoflavone levels. Isoflavones, a type of phytoestrogen, have been shown to affect many research endpoints.

Likewise, alfalfa meal is excluded due to the presence of a different class of phytoestrogen. Additionally, this omission vastly improves the clarity of fluorescent imaging because the chlorophyll content of the diet is minimized.

Note: Terminology used to describe laboratory animal diets is not consistent across the industry. In this context, we use the phrase “natural ingredient” to denote the relative lack of processing of the ingredients. Natural ingredient diets might also be referred to as “standard”, “grain-based” or “chow” — terms that may convey some information about the nature of the diet or how it is used but may not provide enough clarity for your purposes.