With so many products on the market, it can be a challenge to decide what to feed your dog. Not only do you have to choose out of many, but you also want the best for your dog – and you want to be able to afford it. And now you need to decide between wet food, dry food, kibble … It just goes on. Animaltalk looks at kibble, which is a popular choice among dog owners.
How is kibble made?
When it comes to kibble, you might have wondered if this type of food is enough for your dog’s nutritional needs. A look at how this food is manufactured gives some good insight and will help you decide whether this is what you want to feed your pooch. A good comparison to dry pet food, in terms of the manufacturing process, is rusks, which are produced by shaping a bread-like substance, and cooking, cutting and finally drying the product. As a result of the low moisture content and added preservatives, the product enjoys a longer shelf life. In dry pet food manufacturing, the similar process used is called extrusion. This entails the mixing of ingredients, adding water to achieve a 25 to 28% moisture content (to create a dough), to allow for a thorough cooking process to ensure the starch is cooked through, making it safe for pet consumption. This wet dough is kneaded, proofed (or conditioned), shaped and then baked at temperatures not exceeding 160°C. The food is then processed through an extruder, which cuts it into kibbles. As the kibbles are still wet at this stage, drying takes place at about 55°C, until the product has less than 10% moisture (which is very similar to rusks), during which time the kibbles are often sprayed with fat, oil and flavours.
Giving your dog what he needs
The process described is no harsher than cooking processes used for human foods. The difference is that most humans enjoy the privilege of eating a varied diet, inclusive of fresh fruits and vegetables that compensate for loss of nutrients, lost during cooking and possibly not contained in their main meals. Pets cannot (and should not) do this, nor is a human diet fit for pet consumption – their dietary needs are very different to ours. To ensure your pets are getting exactly what they need, commercially prepared pet foods are fortified with vitamins and other essential minerals in just the right quantities to suit their specific needs and balance the nutrition in the food, as defined and researched by qualified nutritionists. The end result is that your dog receives a nutritious and balanced meal, even if he is only eating a good-quality kibble. Remember that the vitamin and mineral quantities declared on pet food packaging are stated at the level contained in the food before or as it reaches its best before date. Once a food has passed this date, these quantities cannot be guaranteed.
Not just healthy, yummy too!
Your dog needs more than nutrition though, it’s also important to ensure the food tastes good to our pets to ensure that they won’t turn up their noses at dinner! To guarantee dogs remain attracted to their food, it is advantageous to add flavourants to enhance the flavour. These flavours are created from by-products of specific tissue collected from slaughterhouses and treated with enzymes to digest them. After fermentation, to produce rich ‘soup broths’, the distinct flavour is added to the food. This is a highly professional and quality-driven procedure to ensure best results for pets.
It is a combination of the ingredients used in commercial pet foods, together with the processing method and flavours added, which makes the food desirable to and palatable for your pet. One of the biggest advantages of feeding a commercially prepared pet food is convenience, and then being able to rest assured that you are providing your dog with all the nutrients he requires. To take this task on yourself is challenging, as your pet’s needs are very different to your own, and if attempting a homemade diet, you will need to ensure that the correct ratios of each food group for a specific species, with balanced energy intake, are achieved.
Busting myths
It is thus true that commercially prepared pet foods are fortified with vitamins and minerals, but this is not due to ‘harsh’ manufacturing processes that destroy nutrients, as is sometimes incorrectly believed. Their inclusion aids in increasing the nutritional content of the product, in much the same way that most breakfast cereals are fortified. The benefit is building the nutritional intake of dogs who eat a single-product diet, because pet foods that are complete and balanced often form the only food that the pet eats. In South Africa the government encourages industry and researchers to find ways to fortify staple foods with proteins, vitamins and minerals because of the benefit that it has to the end consumer. It is therefore important to ensure that the vitamins and minerals remain as per requirements up to the best before date marked on the food packaging.
