Sating the appetites of today’s pet parents

Convenience food

In an age where convenience is king, dry foods have come to dominate the pet food market: they provide everything a dog needs in one single bag, are easy to store and relatively inexpensive. But is ‘fast food’ the best choice for today’s discerning pet owner?

Today’s customer is fast becoming a far more demanding ‘pet parent’, who no longer feels comfortable with products that have lost nutrition in hot processing lines to be replaced with synthetic vitamins and minerals. In fact, the final dried product often not even resembles the originalitem before cooking.

Different methods

Cold-pressing is arguably the best way to prepare a dry pet food: the food isn’t doubly exposed to the potentially damaging high temperatures normally associated with dry pet food production and should, therefore, leave the food with much more of its natural nutrients.

Extrusion is still the most common cooking method for dry dog foods. Its critics claim that the high pressures and temperatures involved destroy some of the nutrients contained in the food, including vitamins, some amino-acids and enzymes. Its supporters advocate that the cooking process increases digestibility and palatability, and kills parasites.

Due to the controversy surrounding extrusion, alternative cooking methods are gaining ground. Baking allows foods to be cooked at lower temperatures and thus may leave more of the nutrients intact. Unfortunately, wheat gluten has often been an essential component in baked foods and since a lot of dogs have considerable problems with wheat, baking has never really taken off. There are exceptions though, including UK-based McAdams Pet Foods and Fold Hill, which have found ways to bake dog food without using wheat.

Air drying involves exposing the food to a current of heated air which gently removes the water from the food through evaporation. Air drying reduces the damage to proteins, vitamins and enzymes compared to conventional cooking methods.

Wet, raw and frozen

Wet foods don’t require any added preservatives as the cooking process kills all microorganisms within the sealed containers. Wet foods can be complete or complementary. Since wet foods contain meat and vegetable moisture many consumers find them more suitable for their pet’s digestion. Indeed, many consumers feel that today’s canned and pouched ‘hotpot’ ready meals contain high levels of real meat with many including vegetables, rice and potato.

The increasing demand for raw foods led to a growing number of freezers in pet shops across the UK. Many regard raw feeding as the most natural way to feed a dog and over the past few years it has become the fastest growing pet feeding trend in the UK.

Many raw feeder suppliers prepare their own diets for dogs but a number of companies, such as Natures Menu, have developed pre-prepared complete raw meals in easy to pour, thaw and serve packets which provide all of the benefits of raw feeding with all the convenience of a conventional dog food. Transporting frozen foods for extended periods can be tricky and, having to thaw them overnight before feeding, isn’t as easy as opening a bag or a tin. But for the growing numbers of raw feeders it seems a small price to pay.

Best diet?

Dehydrated food is essentially raw food and a lot of people insist that it’s one of the best diets for dogs, retaining all its enzymes, vitamins, minerals and general nutritional value that would be lost or damaged by cooking. However, some critics believe this has yet to be proven.

Meanwhile, its freeze-dried counterpart is claiming to be the most nutritious raw alternative. It removes the moisture in the meat by simply freezing the product dry, meaning the final product is conveniently dry raw without damage from heat processing.

Dehydrated foods have a wrinkled appearance, so it’s often impossible to recognize what it was before the process. Once rehydrated, which can often take hours, the taste may not be close to the original food. Sometimes a dehydrated food has a tough or leathery texture. The dehydration process is often inexpensive, but if customers choose dog foods where the water is removed through freeze-drying it can be more expensive.