Application of protease in pet food attractants

The main purpose of adding pet attractants to pet food is to enhance the appetite of pets and make them like to eat more, so as to ensure that pets take in enough nutrition, ensure the uniformity and palatability of grain taste, and increase the quality of pets' eating. For the application of attractants, the theoretical basis is mainly to analyze the feeding behavior of animals. The standard for judging whether food is eaten is mainly based on smell and taste. Because attractants can improve the taste and smell of food, strengthening this feature with the help of attractants can promote animal feeding. Whether animals eat or not is based on this feature of food. The smell and taste of food are used to judge whether they have eaten before. If there is the same memory of smell and taste, animals will eat, otherwise they will not. This is the physiological basis for judging the quality of pet attractants.

Pet dogs swallow directly, and do not need to chew continuously like us humans. Dogs only need to use their incisors to cut prey or food into small pieces and swallow them into their stomachs. But they have a very sensitive sense of smell, so this aspect is mainly considered when adding attractants. Using the aroma of attractants to change the taste of dog food, thereby stimulating the dog's olfactory organs, can promote the dog's desire to eat and increase the amount of food intake. In addition, the hydrochloric acid content in the dog's gastric juice is relatively high. The pH of the human stomach environment is 2-4, and the pH of the dog's gastric juice is 1-2. The gastric juice is rich in proteases, which promotes the peristalsis of the digestive tract and the secretion of digestive juices, which is beneficial to the digestion of protein. Adding attractants to dog food can stimulate the dog's various sensory experiences, and then transmit this feeling to the digestive system, prompting the dog's digestive system to play a role, increase the secretion of digestive juices in the digestive organs, and increase the content of digestive enzymes such as proteases and amylases to speed up the dog's gastrointestinal peristalsis, enhance digestive movements, and facilitate the dog's chewing, swallowing, and digestion and absorption of dog food.

At present, the main raw material of pet food attractants in industrial pet food production is chicken liver. Protease hydrolysis technology is mainly used for chicken liver hydrolysis, which synergistically acts on the substrate macromolecular protein, and increases the content of precursor substances such as umami amino acids and umami peptides through endo- and exo-cutting into small molecular polypeptides and amino acids, thereby enhancing the flavor of the final product and further optimizing the overall effect of the Maillard reaction. Different proteases have different action sites, and the resulting combinations of flavor precursor substances such as polypeptides, small peptides, and free amino acids are different, resulting in different aromas of the enzymatic hydrolysate, and the aromas further enhanced by the Maillard reaction will also be different. Therefore, the selection of enzyme preparations is very important for the aroma of attractants and the palatability of pet food.