Technology helps develop nutritious, functional and tasty protein ingredients

Pets love their protein! But, as pet owners become more environmentally conscious and dedicated to supporting their pets’ health, demand for new and better proteins is fast increasing.

Nutritious and tasteful

Whilst proteins need to pack a punch nutritionally, they also need to taste great. As all pet owners know, animals prefer to eat food they like and may not finish their meal if it isn’t to their taste. Reduced food intake prevents pets from meeting their calorific and nutrient requirements – and can even seriously impact pet health.

Technology to sniff out the best-tasting protein

Whether a pet likes its food is influenced by many factors including odor, taste and texture. It’s why Livalta, a company specializing in developing protein-rich ingredients, set out to create a new yeast protein. The aim was to create a protein that would hit the perfect combination of odor, taste and texture that pets adore.

The company started with a clear idea of what the target taste and smell profile of the new product should look like. To find this perfect combination, they used an electronic nose and tongue. The nose and tongue comprise numerous sensors that mimic the biological senses of smell and taste.

Perfect protein

The first step was to have the electronic tongue and nose ‘taste and smell’ the yeast raw material and establish an initial sensory fingerprint (see figure). Not quite there yet, Livalta next used enzymes to change the taste profile of the raw material and mapped the results against a target profile. This allowed them to exclude those elements that did not hit the mark early in the process.

The use of electronic technology not only helped speed up the development process, but also allowed the company to create the perfect protein based on extensive taste and smell criteria. Their new yeast protein for pets, LivaltaCell PSY, was born.

Now it’s over to real dogs and cats to make the ultimate verdict as to how delicious they find this ingredient!