Quality and digestibility of dry foods from different commercial categories for adult dogs

Abstract

The chemical composition, apparent digestibility coefficients (ADC) and metabolizable energy (ME) of 16 adult dog foods of different commercial categories were determined. The products were classified as superpremium (n=5), premium (n=6) and economic (n-5). The ADC was estimated using the chromic oxide method, in a randomly assigned experiment. The superpremium foods presented higher nutricional densities: the protein content was 9 and 5 point percent higher than economical and premium foods, respectively, while fat content was 7 and 4.5 point percent higher. Economic foods presented low protein and high crude fiber and ash. There were products with higher crude fiber and ash than that declared by the manufacturers. Then mean ADC of superpremium, premium and economic products were, respectively, 81.5, 74.7 and 59.25% for dry matter, 83.2, 76.9 and 66.2% for crude protein, and 85.6, 81.5 and 65.8% for crude energy. These results were significantly different (P<0,05), which indicates a high digestibility for superpremium products and very low digestibility for economic ones. Variations among foods were important in the premium and economic categories, since products with different quality were found in a given commercial category. Because of its chemical composition and digestibility, the economic diets presented low ME (2.7kcal/g). Possibly, the selection of ingredients and industrial processing were responsible for the large difference in quality among products. Digestibility has proved to be an important tool when used in association with chemical composition in the production, evaluation and classification of foods for dogs and cats.