BIOCLAIMS standard diet (BIOsd): a reference diet for nutritional physiology

The Author(s) 2012. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract Experimental replication is fundamental for practicing science. To reduce variability, it is essential to control sources of variation as much as possible. Diet is an important factor that can influence many processes and functional outcomes in studies performed with rodent models. This is especially true for, but not limited to, nutritional studies. To compare functional effects of dif-ferent nutrients, it is important to use standardized, semi-purified diets. Here, we propose and describe a standard reference diet, the BIOCLAIMS standard diet. The diet is AIN-93 based, but further defined with dietary and exper-imental requirements taken into account that allow for experiments with bioactive food components and natural (non-expensive) labeling. This diet will be implemented by two European research consortia, Mitofood and BIO-CLAIMS, to ensure inter-laboratory comparability