The Cat’s Palatability, What Is It?

Maybe you’ve never heard of palatability. This is a term that includes several things about your cat’s food. We invite you to know what this very peculiar word means. Let’s meet?

What is palatability?

Palatability is defined as an animal’s response to a particular type of food. It comes from the word palate and has to do with the taste your cat feels for certain meals.

It refers to processed pet foods and is measured in proportion to how much the pet eats, based on a daily diet, and the preference among the various options when they are offered simultaneously.

A palatal diet can be acceptable when it provides the amount of energy the animals need and meets nutritional requirements, or simply what most cats prefer.

Initially, it was thought that palatability was determined by the sensory characteristics of the food – its smell, flavor and texture for contact with the mouth – and by the cat’s previous experiences.

Cats are highly specialized carnivores that require a high protein diet and obviously this is reflected in the taste buds of the pussies.

Its natural prey is from vertebrate animals. This is due to your nutritional needs, anatomy and digestive physiology.

Unlike dogs that hunt in packs, cats are solitary predators that hunt prey and eat them right after killing them, so they prefer food with a certain temperature.

The cat’s taste is very similar to that of other carnivores, but because they specialize in eating only meat, they are attracted to foods that contain a high content of protein and certain amino acids, and don’t choose their foods based on their salt content. or sugar.

These preferences are also strongly associated with what they ate as puppies, with reference to the foods they were exposed to. At this age, food selection is more malleable, being strongly influenced by what the mother eats.

Cats have an aversion to eating the same type of food all the time, which may be a defense mechanism that makes them avoid a potential nutritional disorder associated with a single-food diet and reflects a congenital need to seek out a variety of prey. .

Domestic cats also show this pattern.

What is the best food for the cat?

Unlike other species, there is little information about the specific role of certain nutrients in cats’ eating habits.

Nutrition scientists have been working to try to understand what it is that attracts kittens to their food.

Recent studies have revealed a surprising fact, that the little furry ones have proven to have a “nutritional wisdom” and given the freedom to choose their meal, they look for foods with specific levels of protein, fat or carbohydrates.

The diet of an adult house cat is 52% protein, 36% fat and 12% carbohydrate.

Wet foods for cats contain nearly all the protein they need, only they have   more fat and less carbohydrates, and dry foods have a considerable amount of the latter.

However, many cats prefer dry foodstuffs, which leaves many doubts about what they really want.

All of this suggests that the nutritional content of foods is the key to identifying digestibility, which would help to identify the components and amounts needed to manufacture food.

This is essential as the purpose of pet food is to provide calories and nutrients, but this will only be achieved if the pet is willing to eat them.

This desire is not always linked to the nutritional properties of foods, because it depends on different factors that influence what kind of food is eaten by them.

The challenge, for both manufacturers and owners, is to give the kittens a varied meal, which, in addition to fulfilling what your pet needs, also arouses his interest in eating it.

If you have a furry little one, you know what we mean: if he doesn’t like it, he won’t eat. Cats are also very determined in terms of food.