Formulation of home-prepared food satisfied AAFCO dog food nutrient profiles（2016）

Abstract

  When dogs have food allergy, home-prepared food can be desired. Further, some owners prefer to cook for their dogs. However, it is difficult for dog owners to formulate nutritionally well-balanced home-prepared foods. Therefore, we designed recipes of home-prepared food satisfying AAFCO dog food nutrient profiles（2016）, i.e. nutritionally complete foods. In addition, we designed the recipes that veterinarians and pet-food dietitians easily instruct owners and that owners easily purchase the ingredients at a local market. We formulated nutritionally complete foods consisting of basal food and supplementary food; the basal foods are the main sources of protein and carbohydrate and its ingredients are selected from routinely-consumed foodstuffs by general household, a supplementary food consisting of fixed ingredients are for supplying trace nutrients. We mainly referred STANDARD TABLES OF FOOD COMPOSITION IN JAPAN - 2015 -（Seventh Revised Version）for estimating nutrient concentrations in the designed foods. Metabolizable-energy（ME）content was calculated with modified Atwater factors and the nutritional adequacy was assessed by the estimated dietary nutrient-concentrations on the ME basis. It was difficult to satisfy the minimum level of calcium in the nutrient profiles using commonly used foodstuffs. Therefore, we determined mineral concentration in chicken egg shells, indicating that chicken egg shells can substitute for calcium additives in the complete foods. The basal foods almost satisfied essential-amino-acid concentrations but many trace nutrients were inadequate in the basal foods. The addition of supplementary food containing egg shells to basal foods makes all of trace nutrients adequate. Using our method of design for dog foods, dog owners easily prepare nutritionally complete foods satisfying AAFCO dog food nutrient profiles（2016）.