The aim was to investigate effects of intestinal electrical stimulation (IES) on food intake, body weight and gastric emptying in rats. An experiment on food intake and weight change was performed in 22 regular rats and 10 diet induced obese (DIO) rats for 4 weeks with IES or sham IES. The effect of IES on gastric emptying was performed in other 20 regular rats. We found: 1) In regular rats, 4-week IES resulted in a reduction of 18.2% in the total amount of food intake in comparison with sham-IES (P=0.02); the rats treated with IES had a weight change of -1 ±7.8g (P=0.03), which was equivalent to a weight loss of 6.2 % due to IES when adjusted for normal growing; 2) Acute IES delayed gastric emptying by 20% in the regular rats (P < 0.01). 3). In the DIO rats, 1-week IES with the same parameters as those used in the regular rats resulted in a significant reduction in the total amount of food intake (126.6 ± 6.3g vs. 116.9 ± 3.2g, P < 0.01). More reduction in food intake was noted and a significant weight change was also observed when stimulation energy was increased 4). No adverse events were observed in any of the experiments. In conclusion, IES delays gastric emptying, reduces food intake and decreases weight gain in regular growing rats. These data suggest that it is worthy to explore therapeutic potentials of IES for obesity.