Polydipsia induced by intermittent delivery of salted liquid foods.

Food-deprived rats given constant access to water were exposed to fixed-time presentations of soybean milk and diluted sweetened condensed cows' milk. In some conditions these liquid foods were adulterated with varying amounts of sodium chloride. Under a fixed-time 30-sec schedule of food delivery, little water was consumed when the food was soybean milk alone, or soybean milk with sodium chloride added in concentrations of .9, 1.8, or 3.6%. However, schedule-induced polydipsia appeared when soybean milk adulterated with 7.2 or 14.4% sodium chloride was delivered under this schedule. When soybean milk containing 7.2% sodium chloride was presented under fixed-time 15-, 30-, 60-, 120-, and 240-sec schedules, schedule-induced drinking increased with the fixed-time value from 15 to 120 seconds, and decreased at 240 seconds. Like soybean milk, diluted sweetened condensed milk delivered under fixed-time schedules of 30, 60, and 120 seconds failed to evoke schedule-induced polydipsia, but did so when adulterated with 7.2% sodium chloride. Drinking induced by salted liquid foods resembled the polydipsia engendered by spaced dry-food presentations in several ways, including temporal relation to food delivery, persistence within and across sections, sensitivity to interfood interval, and magnitude relative to intake evoked by bulk-food presentation.