November 03, 2022

Interpretive Summary: Digestible indispensable amino acid scores of animal and plant ingredients potentially used in dog diet formulation: how this protein quality metric is affected by ingredient characteristics and reference amino acid profile

Interpretive Summary: Digestible indispensable amino acid scores of animal and plant ingredients potentially used in dog diet formulation: how this protein quality metric is affected by ingredient characteristics and reference amino acid profile

By: James R Templeman, Anna K Shoveller

Indispensable amino acids (IAA) are nutrients a dog requires, but that the dog cannot create naturally, so must be included in their diet. A concept known as protein quality (PQ) reflects how closely the IAA profile of an ingredient comes to meeting the dogs’ requirements. The focus of this report was to use IAA data from literature to predict PQ using equations to determine digestible indispensable amino acid scores (defined herein as DIAAS-like values) of ingredients used in dog diets. Additionally, as various resources exist that define dogs’ IAA needs differently, either based on physiological requirements or practical recommendations, we assessed how these differences may affect PQ. Ultimately, while PQ should be assessed utilizing physiological requirements of the population of interest, individual ingredient and ingredient category differences in DIAAS-like values when using practical recommendations rather than physiological requirements highlight the different regulatory approaches to developing these recommendations.

Read the full article in the Journal of Animal Science.