A committee of American Institute of Nutrition (AIN) members formulated and published the formulation for the AIN-76A purified rat and mouse diet. The rationale for publishing the formulation for a purified diet was to provide a standard reference diet that could be used throughout the biomedical research community by researchers who had limited knowledge and experience in diet formulation. The AIN-76A diet has been used successfully in biomedical research for the past 35 years.