Is Beef or Chicken Easier for Dog to Digest
In "Dog Food Logic" and "Simply Have Optics for You", I have emphasized (okay, some might say "harped upon") the demand for pet nutrient companies to provide digestibility information to consumers. It is non a hard value to determine and nearly pet food companies already conduct feeding trials that measure this (still go along the results to themselves). As i of the near basic measures of food quality, digestibility provides essential information that tin can help dog owners to select the best nutrient for their dog.
What is digestibility (and why does it affair)? To refresh, digestibility reflects a nutrient's ability to deliver essential nutrients to the domestic dog who is eating it. This ultimately affects not only defecation quantity and quality (how much your domestic dog poops and how the poop looks and smells), and a domestic dog'south propensity for flatulence (no caption needed), merely more than importantly, a dog'south longterm health and wellness. This graphic, presented in the essay, "Scoopin' for Scientific discipline", summarizes how digestibility is measured using feeding trials with dogs.
In case you have non noticed, it is that last stride, "Provide Results to Consumers" that is glaringly absent from the dog nutrient scene. But, I harp (once again).
Onward. In that location is good news to tell.
Adept vs. Poor Digestibility: The term digestibility coefficient refers to the percent of a food that the dog absorbs into his or her body during the process of digestion. As a rule of pollex, dry domestic dog foods with digestibility values of 75 % or lesswill exist of very poor quality, those with values between 75 and 82 % are classified as moderate in quality, and foods with digestibility values that are higher than 82 % are of high quality. If you lot encounter products with 88 % or more reported digestibility, you lot take a rock star. (For a more detailed explanation of dog nutrient digestibility, see "![](https://thesciencedog.com/2017/02/01/digestibility-matters/"DN332_b.jpg")
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The paradox lies in the fact that while many pet nutrient companies routinely measure out the digestibility of their products, they are non required to report this information to the people who purchase their foods. Most do not provide this data fifty-fifty when it is directly requested. Digestibility matters (a lot), merely we cannot judge foods with data that we practice non accept.
The good news is that 2 research studies measuring the digestibility of domestic dog foods formulated with different types of protein sources were recently published past a grouping of animal nutritionists from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and the Academy of Copenhagen in Denmark (1,2). The first compared the digestibility of domestic dog foods that used three common brute protein meals and the 2d compared the utilize of fresh chicken meat (aka "chicken first") with poultry meal as protein sources in a dry nutrient. Because all of the protein ingredients that the researchers examined are oft found in commercial foods, their results may be helpful to you in your search for a quality food.
Similar me, you may be surprised past what they found:
Lamb, fish, or poultry meal? In the beginning written report, the investigators compared the protein and overall digestibility of three dry out (extruded) canis familiaris foods that were formulated containing equivalent amounts of either lamb meal, fish meal or poultry meal (1). Considering one of the objectives of their work was to decide if mink provide a suitable model for assessing pet food quality, they tested the foods in growing mink, adult mink and developed dogs.
Results: As a poly peptide source, lamb meal showed significantly lower values for multiple measures of protein quality and essential amino acid content when compared with both poultry meal and fish repast. Even though all iii diets were formulated to provide complete and balanced nutrition, the lamb meal diet was found to be deficient in the essential amino acrid methionine, when digestibility was taken into account. Although differences between poultry and fish meals were not equally dramatic, poultry meal was of lower quality than fish meal. As a poly peptide source in dog food, fish repast had the highest values on nigh all quality measures, including digestibility and essential amino acrid content. When tested in developed dogs, the poly peptide digestibility values of the iii foods were 71.v, eighty.two, and 87.0 for lamb meal, poultry meal and fish meal, respectively. Overall, this study suggests that, at least for the sources used in this work, the social club of protein quality was lamb meal (poor), poultry meal (moderate), and fish meal (loftier). Additionally, although the reported level of lamb meal in the diet exceeded the minimum methionine requirement for adult dogs, the actual amount of methionine that was available to the dogs (i.e. was digested) was less than their minimum requirement for this nutrient.
Is fresh craven better? The squad's second study is groundbreaking. It is the first to examine whether or non there is a demonstrated benefit to including "fresh" (frozen, actually) chicken in an extruded, dry out dog nutrient. This is important because the promotion of "fresh offset" on pet food labels is frequently used as a claim for higher protein quality in the product. The researchers tested the digestibility and amino acrid content of fresh, raw chicken (technically referred to equally "raw mechanically separated chicken meat") earlier processing (cooking) and and so over again after it was included in a dry canis familiaris food to supercede about 25 pct of the product's poultry repast. Because raw meat has been shown to be more than digestible than dry rendered protein meals, it was hypothesized that including raw chicken in the dry food would indeed improve the foods digestibility by several percentage points. (Annotation: Because mink had been previously shown to exist a suitable model for dogs, adult mink were used to test the diets).
Results: As expected, when tested before processing the digestibility of raw chicken meat was significantly higher than that of rendered poultry meal (88.two % vs. fourscore.9 %, respectively). Yet, when the raw craven meat replaced 25 percent of the poultry meal in an extruded dry food, the digestibility of the food was not significantly improved (81.3 vs. 80.3, respectively). In addition, the digestibility of several essential amino acids was actually higher in the food containing only poultry meal than in the nutrient that included the raw chicken meat.
Accept Away for Domestic dog Folks
Wow. The results of these two studies contradict several previously accustomed (if never actually proven) domestic dog food edicts. These are:
- Lamb meal is a loftier quality protein source for pet foods. Um, apparently not. The first report plant that lamb meal was poorly digested (seventy.5 %) and provided inadequate levels of an essential amino acid, methionine after digestibility was taken into account.
- Named species meals are always superior to generic meals. This refers to the general rule of thumb that domestic dog folks should always choose a food that uses chicken, turkey, salmon or lamb meals over the less specific meat, poultry or fish meals. At least regarding the animal-based protein sources used in these studies, choosing lamb over the generic poultry or fish may not get you the quality you lot are hoping for.
- Craven first on the pet food label means college quality (more digestible) protein: Nope over again. While the digestibility of fresh chicken meat was higher than that of poultry meal when tested prior to processing, incorporating fresh craven (as 25 percentage of the protein source!) into an extruded nutrient did not better digestibility oratomic number 82 to a higher quality product. The researchers speculated that this may have occurred because raw meat ingredients could be more susceptible to damage acquired by the heating and drying processes of extrusion than are rendered protein meals. Regardless of the cause, information technology appears that "Chicken First' may non be the marketing holy grail that pet food companies are promoting it to be.
This is great information for dog folks to have. Many thanks to this team of researchers, among others (all notably at universities, not from pet food companies) who have been publishing scientific evidence regarding the poly peptide quality, amino acid content, digestibility and safe of various canis familiaris food ingredients and products. We are grateful to you all and hope to meet more of these types of studies. Although these exercise not (notwithstanding) go and then far as to provide the states answers to the near of import question: " What is the digestibility of the brand of food that I am feeding to my domestic dog?" they provide needed and essential information.
I have said this many times before and will say it again:
If pet nutrient manufacturers insist on telling us that their brands of nutrient are expected to provide "consummate and counterbalanced nutrition" throughout our dogs' lives, then providing a few very uncomplicated measures of the quality of those foods is non too much to ask.
The researchers of these papers hold. They cease the abstract of their start paper with this argument: "Furthermore, the study showed that to ensure nutritional adequacy of canis familiaris nutrient and to exist able to compare protein quality of domestic dog foods, data of AA [amino acrid] limerick and digestibility is crucial ". [Emphasis mine].
So, pet food manufacturers……..are you listening? Time to stride up and provide this information on your labels, websites, or at the very to the lowest degree, in response to direct inquiries. In the concurrently, I will continue to written report and promote enquiry studies that provide u.s. with the information that we need to cull smart for our dogs.
Until next fourth dimension, happy feeding and happy grooming!
Cited Studies:
- Tjernsbekk MT, Tauson AH, Matthiesen Cf, Ahlostrom O. Protein and amino acid bioavailability of extruded domestic dog nutrient with protein meals of unlike quality using growing mink (Neovison vison) as a model. Journal of Creature Science 2016; 94:3796-3804.
- Tjernsbekk MT, TAuson AH, Kraugerus OF, Ahlstrom O. Raw, mechanically separated craven meat and salmon protein hydrolysate as protein sources in extruded canis familiaris food: Result on poly peptide and amino acid digestibility. Animal Physiology and Animal Nutrition 2017 (in press).
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Source: https://thesciencedog.com/2017/02/01/digestibility-matters/
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