A panel of expert feline taste-testers have helped researchers work out the secret to making cat food that cats will like. This study could transform the pet food industry by learning more about the unique palates of our feline friends.
Catering to Finicky Felines
Cats are notoriously finicky eaters, often leaving a lovingly prepared meal uneaten. It would be so much easier if we could build meals around tastes they enjoy.
Now researchers in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry have pinpointed what makes a cat’s taste buds tingle. The researchers recruited a panel of 10 adult cats to help determine the taste compounds that are responsible for catching cats’ attention.
It turns out, the secret is in those delicious savoury and fatty flavours that cats cannot resist. Cats have a well-developed sense of scent; if the food smells right to them, they will eat it up in no time. Cats, for instance, experience more acute taste buds for the umami (savoriness), and they cannot even detect sweetness. And while meat-flavoured food attractant sprays can improve dry kibble’s scent and taste appeal, exactly how the molecules that give a substance its flavour — called volatile flavour compounds — also make it palatable has been unknown.
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A Feline Focus Group
To solve this culinary conundrum, the researchers consulted an unusual team of experts: a 10-cat-strong panel of adult cats who are not allowed catnip as part of their diets. A focus group of furries were then brought in to rate a variety of food sprays, all mixing various volatile flavour compounds from chicken liver.
To make the liver paste that the Tsetse flies are attracted to, researchers began by homogenizing chicken livers and pasteurizing them with heat treatment. The epitome of the spray-ness featured a very diverse group of flavour compounds — from tropical to floral, all the way to sweaty and rubbery.
The researchers then applied a coating of chicken fat to commercially available cat food and sprayed the food with one of the four chicken liver attractants. The samples were presented to the cats next to a control food that had been treated with a different, commercially available attractant. The team then measured which bowl the cats had first eaten from and how much food they took per day.
The results were unambiguous: the cats preferred and ate more of the attractant-treated diets that contained higher levels of free amino acids. This Maillard reaction would also result in several potential aroma enhancers to be generated during the heat treatment step, and indeed some of the identified carboxylic acids are important flavour precursors as well. Favourite foods were also higher in mushroom and fatty flavours, while less liked foods were abundant in acidic- and sweet-tasting compounds, possibly because of fewer Maillard reactions.
Conclusion
The findings of this study could lead to a transformative effect on the pet food industry, enabling producers to develop foods for cats that suit their specific tastes and preferences. That is when we show a list of the 10 20 or different flavour compounds and why cats find those combinations attractive too; which is to inspire us and make it more interesting for picky cat eaters.
