Plant-based pet food: Processing, nutrition and sustainability

Samenvatting

As trends in human food are followed by their translation into pet food, the project entitled “Plant-based pet food: Processing, nutrition and sustainability” aimed to investigate all relevant aspects of plant-based pet food. This was done with focus on meat analogue application produced by shear cell technology within the Plant Meat Matters Consortium. It was found that when sterilizing sheared meat analogues to produce canned pet food, meat analogues acquired textural properties similar to conventional chunked pet food. Nutritional properties concerning amino acids, in vitro digestibility, and mineral (phosphorus) availability of processed meat analogues were comparable or better than conventional pet food. Finally, a new measure for evaluating sustainability of plant-based pet food recipes called Degree of Crop Protein Utilization was developed and evaluated.