Achieving the desired palatability for pet food is not always a straightforward process. What issues do manufacturers have to deal with?
Using additives as a component of pet food diets can serve various purposes. They ensure food longevity and safety and maintain the texture and color of pet food after a prolonged period of storage. An additive may be used to prevent water activity, spoilage, and oxidation of sensitive ingredients that require additional protection.
Another use of additives is to increase the palatability and flavor of the diet. The flavor is an important sensory feature for both dogs and cats, and will ultimately determine whether the food – no matter how well-balanced and nutritious – is consumed in its entirety.
The rules and regulations
In the EU, additives in pet food must be authorized under existing EU regulations and stated on the product label. Regulation is not straightforward and, according to the European Pet Food Industry Federation (FEDIAF), there is no obligation to declare additives, with no legal maximum limit.
Additionally, the additive’s name does not need to be given on the label, just the functional group it belongs to preservatives, antioxidants, flavorings, or colorants.
Improving palatability
Pet food companies invest a considerable amount of time, effort, and resources in improving diet palatability, especially some extruded veterinary diets where there is a need to significantly reduce protein (chronic kidney disease, cystine or purine urolithiasis) or fat (chronic pancreatitis). Or to formulate a diet with hydrolyzed protein, where the addition of synthetic amino acids is necessary to balance out the composition.
Types of tasty ingredients
Flavor enhancers can be characterized as synthetic or naturally derived ingredients. This division is sometimes unclear, as naturally derived substances might be extracted at a significant level of processing that can ultimately influence the integrity of the extracted ingredient.
Natural flavors often added to pet foods are extracts from fish, poultry, and beef meat and organs, while artificial flavors are usually developed to mirror natural ones. Natural palatants or flavor enhancers predominantly used in extruded or wet pet food are referred to as ‘digests’, enzymatically digested proteins that enhance the meaty flavor.
Other frequently used natural palatants are yeasts, essential oils, fats, plant oils, organic acids, spray-dried animal plasma, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting and heating.
Flavor enhancers that do not meet the criteria of natural palatants are classified as synthetic flavors and fall under the same regulation. Although many artificial flavor enhancers are regarded as safe and widely used, some are considered to be controversial.
Debate on the negative effects
Additives in the form of pyrophosphates, or phosphate salts, are often used in cat food to increase palatability by intensifying the taste of amino acids. Some of these nutrients cats do find particularly tasty.
From synthetic to natural
Despite official agencies giving assurances on safety, data to back up the claims is limited. Therefore, it would be wise to work towards replacing synthetic additives, where possible, with more natural, widely used, and readily available palatants.
