Table 3.

Dietary arginine supplementation reduces fat accretion but increases intramuscular fat content in growing-finishing pigs

	Alanine	Arginine
Percentage of total skeletal muscle in the carcass (%)	57.9 ± 0.61	61.1 ± 0.93 *
Percentage of total fat in the carcass (%)	23.1 ± 0.35	20.5 ± 0.60 **
Content of protein in longissimus dorsi muscle (g/100 g)	18.9 ± 0.18	19.8 ± 0.21 **
Content of lipids in longissimus dorsi muscle (g/100 g)	1.81 ± 0.17	3.08 ± 0.48 *

Values are means ± SEM, n = 8. Different from alanine-treated growing-finishing pigs,

^*P < 0.05 and

^**P < 0.01. Twenty-four 110-day-old barrows were assigned randomly to receive corn- and soybean meal-based diet supplementing with 1.0% L-arginine or 2.05% L-alanine (isonitrogenous control). After a 60-day period of arginine supplementation, total skeletal muscle and fat depots in the carcass were weighed. Longissimus dorsi muscle was analyzed for protein and lipids. Adapted from Tan et al. (15).