Fig. 2

Box and whisker plots of sequential energy (a) and gram weight (b) intake in the first canine voluntary food intake study (Study 1) where dogs were fed the two study diets (C1 and C2), over four meals. The boxes depict median (horizontal line) and inter-quartile range (top and bottom of box), the whiskers show the 10–90% range, and outliers are shown as separate points. Each dog was offered 110 kcal/kg^0.75 for 15 min at 08:30 (1^st meal) and again at 09:30 (2^nd meal), and then offered food ad libitum for 15 min at both 10:30 (3^rd meal) and 11:30 (4^th meal). a A significant reduction of energy intake was observed between the second and third meals for both diets (P < 0.001), but between the first and second meals for diet C1 only (C1: P < 0.001; C2: P = 0.256). A diet effect was also evident (P = 0.032), with the main difference being a lesser intake at meal two for C1 compared with C2 (P = 0.006). b A significant reduction in gram weight intake of food was observed between the second and third meals for both diets (P < 0.001), but between the first and second meals for diet C1 only (C1: P < 0.001; C2: P = 0.960). However, no difference in the gram weight intake of food was observed between diets (P = 0.964)