Pet owners often project their personal food standards onto their pets` diet, including the use of natural and plant-based ingredients, and less processed foods. The replacement of glycerine with a clean label ingredient has been, for a long time, a topic of concern for Petfood manufacturers. Glycerine, also known as glycerol, is a chemical compound derived either from vegetable oils or from animal fats, and is used as a technical aid in Petfood since it confers plasticity to semi-moist pet foods and treats.

AM Nutrition aimed to evaluate CarryMoist®, pre-gelatinised Pea Starch Concentrate as a  replacement of glycerine in a formulation of semi-moist dental sticks.

In the formulation of the product, different plant proteins were used such as wheat gluten, corn gluten and AMN Pea Protein Concentrate. The carbohydrates evaluated consisted of pre-gel wheat, pre-gel corn, pre-gel rice and CarryMoist® (pre-gel pea starch by AMN)

The study was run at the Research facilities of Passion4Food, Ålgård, Norway. Results indicated that glycerine can be totally replaced with CarryMoist®. The functional properties of the sticks may change in terms of springiness, but no differences were found in terms of chewiness and overall elasticity. By addition of AMN Pea Protein Concentrate, the external appearance, texture and colour of the sticks changed into a “jerky-like” appearance which can be considered as a positive attribute in the treats.

Our special thanks to Milka, Damir Tesla and Zahra Salimi for the dedicated work done in this study.

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