Dr Siob­han Bridglals­ingh

The his­to­ry of com­mer­cial­ly processed pet food be­gan with the ad­vent of the In­dus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion. It then in­creased in the mid­dle class dur­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry, which led to keep­ing dogs and cats as com­pan­ions in­stead of work­ing an­i­mals.

Eng­lish busi­ness­man James Spratt cre­at­ed the first com­mer­cial pet food in the form of a dog bis­cuit us­ing wheat meals, veg­eta­bles, beet­root and beef blood. Lat­er, in the ear­ly 1900s, an abun­dance of horse meat led to the pro­duc­tion of the first canned dog food in the Unit­ed States.

Dur­ing World War II, tin and meat be­came scarce, forc­ing pet food man­u­fac­tur­ers to ex­plore a shelf-sta­ble prod­uct that could be stored in ce­re­al-type box­es. By 1956, the first dry kib­ble dog food was pro­duced by a process called ex­tru­sion. Canned dog food even­tu­al­ly re­turned to the mar­ket by an­oth­er process known as re­tort­ing.

Both ex­tru­sion and re­tort­ing are pro­cess­ing meth­ods that re­quire high-tem­per­a­ture cook­ing. This type of cook­ing is sim­i­lar to the ul­tra-processed hu­man foods con­sumed in the “West­ern Di­et”, thought to be as­so­ci­at­ed with sev­er­al in­flam­ma­to­ry and de­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases in hu­mans.

The “West­ern di­et” is char­ac­terised by pre-pack­aged foods con­tain­ing high sug­ar and fat, processed meats, re­fined grains, and fried foods.

The “Mediter­ranean di­et”, on the oth­er hand, in­cludes large amounts of fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles, bread, whole grains, beans, nuts and seeds with olive oil as the pri­ma­ry fat source and less­er quan­ti­ties of dairy, meats and poul­try. As pet own­ers be­come aware of the harm­ful ef­fects of con­sum­ing sig­nif­i­cant amounts of high­ly processed hu­man foods, there is a de­mand for pet foods that are mod­er­ate­ly/min­i­mal­ly processed us­ing low tem­per­a­tures, or raw.

Re­search in hu­mans and ro­dents has re­vealed the for­ma­tion of a group of com­pounds called ad­vanced gly­ca­tion end prod­ucts (AGEs). These are Mail­lard Re­ac­tion prod­ucts formed be­tween sim­ple sug­ars and an­oth­er com­pound, usu­al­ly pro­tein, dur­ing the high-tem­per­a­ture cook­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of the West­ern di­et (fry­ing, grilling, roast­ing and broil­ing). This re­ac­tion is crit­i­cal to chefs and food con­nois­seurs since the fi­nal prod­ucts, melanoidins, bring dark brown colour, flavour and aro­ma to food, mak­ing it palat­able and ap­petis­ing. This colour is sim­i­lar to the brown colour seen in cof­fee, bread crusts and char on grilled steaks.

While the Mail­lard Re­ac­tion is de­sir­able in cook­ing, the AGEs al­so pro­duced can be harm­ful. High di­etary in­take is as­so­ci­at­ed with dis­eases such as obe­si­ty, di­a­betes mel­li­tus, Alzheimer’s Dis­ease, Parkin­son’s Dis­ease, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, kid­ney fail­ure and even can­cer in hu­man be­ings. The Mail­lard Re­ac­tion pro­ceeds to a greater ex­tent in pet food prod­ucts sub­ject­ed to high-tem­per­a­ture pro­cess­ing meth­ods, such as ex­tru­sion and re­tort­ing, than with low-tem­per­a­ture meth­ods used for com­mer­cial fresh food di­ets, de­hy­drat­ed/freeze-dried pet foods, home-cooked and raw (stored frozen) di­ets.

Stud­ies on the long-term ef­fects of AGE con­sump­tion in pet dogs and cats have been scarce. Cur­rent UWI re­search is geared to­wards de­ter­min­ing AGEs in pet foods and quan­ti­fy­ing AGEs in the blood or urine of dogs and cats when they con­sume di­ets with var­ied amounts of AGEs. This marks the foun­da­tion for fu­ture prospec­tive stud­ies in­ves­ti­gat­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion and, even more am­bi­tious­ly, the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of AGEs as the cause of dis­eases in both hu­man and an­i­mal med­i­cine. The goals would be first to de­ter­mine if AGEs pose a sig­nif­i­cant threat to our beloved com­pan­ions and, sec­ond­ly, to thwart that threat by im­ple­ment­ing pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures to pro­tect them from any harm­ful ef­fects. This means avoid­ance of high AGE-con­tain­ing di­ets while en­cour­ag­ing in­take of min­i­mal­ly processed foods.

The aim is to ques­tion the evo­lu­tion­ary process of vet­eri­nary nu­tri­tion as our hu­man coun­ter­parts con­tin­ue to make pos­i­tive changes, guid­ed by thor­ough re­search in the field. Po­lit­i­cal and so­cio-eco­nom­ic events have cer­tain­ly in­flu­enced pet food pro­cess­ing in the past to pro­vide our dogs and cats with com­plete and bal­anced, shelf-sta­ble, safe pet food prod­ucts.

The Caribbean com­pan­ion an­i­mal pop­u­la­tion has his­tor­i­cal­ly eat­en foods com­mon to the house­hold with on­ly the sup­ple­men­ta­tion of com­mer­cial­ly processed pet foods. In our so­ci­ety, pets en­joy a com­bi­na­tion of processed/raw food types that may re­sult in re­duced di­etary AGE in­take. This pop­u­la­tion of an­i­mals there­fore pro­vides a unique sub­ject pool for re­search and con­trasts with North Amer­i­can pets that con­sume on­ly ul­tra-processed foods. The Caribbean pet nu­tri­tion lifestyle may pro­vide so­lu­tions to the “AGE prob­lem”, and the School of Vet­eri­nary Med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies is com­mit­ted to fu­ture re­search in this re­gion to “do bet­ter” for our­selves and the glob­al com­pan­ion an­i­mal com­mu­ni­ty.

Dr Siob­han Bridglals­ingh is a board-cer­ti­fied vet­eri­nary nu­tri­tion­ist, grad­u­ate of the School of Vet­eri­nary Med­i­cine at the UWI, STA with a PhD, as a Ful­bright Schol­ar, from The Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia, USA. She al­so com­plet­ed the clin­i­cal nu­tri­tion res­i­den­cy pro­gramme and the Amer­i­can Col­lege of Vet­eri­nary In­ter­nal Med­i­cine (ACVIM) Nu­tri­tion Spe­cial­ty Ex­am­i­na­tion.