Types of pet food attractants and their research

There are many different types of food agents, the main ones being.

Flavourings (meat, frankincense, fruit, fish, garlic, grass, bean and many other flavours);

Sweeteners (single or compound sweeteners);

Acidulants (inorganic or organic edible acids);

Flavouring agents (sodium glutamate, sodium inosinate, sodium guanosinate, etc.);

Spicy agents (garlic powder, chilli powder);

Salting agents (table salt, sodium bicarbonate), etc.

Flavourings

Fats and oils

Fats and oils are not only important nutrients for pets, but they can also change the appearance of pet feeds and improve palatability. They are often sprayed after pelleting to meet nutritional standards and to improve the palatability of dog food. Fats/fats play an important role in the odour of the food, and the type and amount of fat varies with the odour evolved.

Cats are particularly fond of cat food coated with butter or chicken fat, while they dislike food processed with lard or partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. Cat food made with fats rich in medium carbon chain length fatty acids, such as hydrogenated coconut oil or palm kernel oil, is less palatable when the fat content reaches 25%.

Dogs prefer foods with a high fat content. Increasing the fat content on the surface of the food particles helps to enhance the smell of the food, but this can lead to nutritional imbalances. Fats derived from animal by-products produce peroxides, acetaldehyde and methyl ketones in a relatively short period of time, which can produce putrid odours and reduce the palatability of the food.

Hass et al. added a mixture of protein, fat and protease and lipase to dog food to improve the palatability of the food. A powdered food attractant was prepared from animal fat (butter, lard, chicken fat, etc.) or vegetable oil (coconut oil, soybean oil, corn oil, etc.) by saponification, enzymatic digestion or addition of free fatty acids to achieve a free fatty acid content of 10% or more, adding protein, sugar and water to form an emulsion, and then spray drying.

Heat responsive pet food attractants

The protein content of dog food should be around 20% and current dog food ingredients contain a certain amount of meat to meet the protein nutritional targets and to ensure that the food has a good palatability. Adding meat flavour attractants to dog food can enhance the meat flavour of the food, thus replacing meat with other vegetable proteins and reducing the cost of raw materials, while ensuring the nutritional balance of the food.

The meat flavour attractantsWhat is a pet food Palatant?, which are made from amino acids and IDPs with a raw meat flavour profile, are mostly suitable for canned dog food but not for dry dog food. Dogs prefer the flavour of cooked meat to that of raw meat, and dog food enticements made from animal offal are poorly flavoured and do not meet market demand. In recent years, pet food developers and researchers have turned their attention to the development and application of heat-reactive meat flavouring agents.

Raw meat can be heated to produce the characteristic flavour of meat. Studies have shown that meat flavour precursors in meat are heated to produce volatile components with a characteristic meat flavour through a merad reaction and the degradation of lipids. The Merad reaction (click to learn more) is the most important source of meat flavour and has a major impact on the flavour of the food. These substances give pet food an attractive flavour and have a good appetising effect, and are often used in pet food .

Current research is generally based on the production of meat flavours from amino acids, peptides, proteins as well as reducing sugars and lipids, which are heated under specific conditions. Thermal reactions have been widely used in the development and production of meat flavours in pet food and human food, with related products such as beef flavours, chicken flavours and seafood flavours.

Found that the addition of yeast hydrolysate, reducing sugars, fat and animal blood to the ingredients at different stages of processing could produce flavouring substances that improved the palatability of pet food, but the study did not further understand the reasons for the flavouring components. Beale et al. reacted a mixture of reducing sugars, animal blood, fat and lipase and protease at a certain temperature and pH for a period of time, resulting in the hydrolysis of fat and protein. Chin et al. made reference to the preparation method of meat flavouring and used animal protein hydrolysate as the substrate, added reducing sugar, sulphur compounds and other flavour enhancers (phosphoric acid, 2-methylfuran, etc.), and prepared a meat flavouring food attractant by thermal reaction. The results showed that dogs consumed 2.1 times more of the heat-responsive food than the liver-based food.

The table below shows the common aromatic substances found in pet foods, with studies reporting a preference for fatty, meaty and baked flavours. The main flavouring substances that produce meat and baking flavours are heterocyclic compounds and sulphur compounds. Therefore, the content of these substances is often increased in canine food attractants.

Sweeteners

Borochoff et al. added alpha-amylase and amyloglucosidase directly to dog food to break down the starch into glucose and found that glucose improved the palatability of the food.

Acids

Research has shown that acids can also improve the palatability of pet foods. The addition of phosphoric acid to cat food can increase the palatability of cat food to some extent. Some studies have mixed phosphoric acid and citric acid in a ratio of 70:1 and added it to cat food for better results.

However, acids accelerate the oxidation of fats and oils in animal food and do not mix easily with other powdered ingredients, which can be avoided by replacing phosphate with phosphate. In an animal palatability trial with 1.0% sodium dihydrogen phosphate in dog food, it was found that dogs consumed 66.9% of the sodium dihydrogen phosphate food and that the improvement was more pronounced as the storage time of the sodium dihydrogen phosphate food increased. Pyrophosphates were also found to be more effective than phosphate as a pet food attractant, with dogs consuming 9.04 times more sodium pyrophosphate than phosphate.