Food preference in domestic pets

Rofe, P. C.; Anderson, R. S.

doi:10.1079/pns19700064

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…The prevailing hypothesis is that the ability to detect bitter tastants has evolved because of its utility in avoidance of toxic compounds often found in plants, yet obligate carnivores consume little to no plant material. Considering the technical and ethical difficulties in performing behavioral studies on domestic cats, in part due to a lack of feline toxicity data for many of the compounds, we rely on historical data which provides evidence that domestic cats are able to detect bitter compounds [ 26 , 27 ] and reject those compounds [ 28 , 31 ]. Domestic cats have the opportunity to encounter bitter compounds through numerous sources including eating plants, the plant constituents present in the gastrointestinal tract of prey, grains and flavors present in pet food as well as medicines [ 10 , 32 , 33 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These studies reported responses to quinine, including both inhibition and activation, that were spread across multiple classes of neurons, and that in some cases were adapted by pre-exposure to acidic stimuli, suggesting a lack of specificity. Behaviorally, cats reject quinine and are reported to be more sensitive to quinine than humans [ 26 , 28 - 31 ], and denatonium sulfate has been used in commercial products to deter cats from chewing on furniture and other objects.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A functional comparison of the domestic cat bitter receptors Tas2r38 and Tas2r43 with their human orthologs

Sandau¹,

Goodman

Thomas

et al. 2015

BMC Neurosci

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BackgroundDomestic cats (felis catus) have a reputation for being rather unpredictable in their dietary choices. While their appetite for protein or savory flavors is consistent with their nutritional needs, their preference among protein-sufficient dietary options may relate to differences in the response to other flavor characteristics. Studies of domestic cat taste perception are limited, in part, due to the lack of receptor sequence information. Several studies have described the phylogenetic relationship of specific cat taste receptor sequences as compared with other carnivores. For example, domestic cats are obligate carnivores and their receptor Tas1r2, associated with the human perception of sweet, is present only as a pseudogene. Similarly, the cat perception of bitter may differ from that of other mammals due to variations in their repertoire of bitter receptor (Tas2r) genes. This report includes the first functional characterization of domestic cat taste receptors.ResultsWe functionally expressed two uncharacterized domestic sequences Tas2r38 and Tas2r43 and deorphanized the receptors using a cellular functional assay. Statistical significance was determined using an unpaired, two-tailed t-test. The cat sequence for Tas2r38 contains 3 major amino acid residues known to confer the taster phenotype (PAI), which is associated with sensitivity to the bitter compounds PROP and PTC. However, in contrast to human TAS2R38, cat Tas2r38 is activated by PTC but not by PROP. Furthermore, like its human counterpart, cat Tas2r43 is activated by aloin and denatonium, but differs from the human TAS2R43 by insensitivity to saccharin. The responses of both cat receptors to the bitter ligands were concentration-dependent and were inhibited by the human bitter blocker probenecid.ConclusionsThese data demonstrate that the response profiles of the cat bitter receptors Tas2r38 and Tas2r43 are distinct from those of their orthologous human receptors. Results with cat Tas2r38 also demonstrate that additional residues beyond those classically associated with PROP sensitivity in humans influence the sensitivity to PROP and PTC. Functional studies of the human bitter receptor family are being applied to the development of food and medicinal products with more appealing flavor profiles. Our work lays the foundation for similar work applied to felines.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12868-015-0170-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A functional comparison of the domestic cat bitter receptors Tas2r38 and Tas2r43 with their human orthologs

Sandau¹,

Goodman

Thomas

et al. 2015

BMC Neurosci

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“…Behavioral studies such as preference and acceptance tests with animals can be conducted to improve the product development process, but they are expensive, time consuming and yield limited and often equivocal data (Booth ). Moreover, factors such as individual animal variation, previous diet, experience and lateral bias complicate the protocol of tests using animals (Rofe and Anderson ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Initial Lexicon for Sensory Properties of Dry Dog Food

Donfrancesco

Koppel

Chambers

2012

Journal of Sensory Studies

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A sensory lexicon for human description of the flavor, aroma, texture and appearance characteristics of dry dog food was developed using a consensus profile method. Twenty-one products, available in the U.S. market, were studied. A fivemember highly trained descriptive sensory panel identified, defined and referenced more than 70 sensory attributes for this product category. The lexicon established included attributes common to most of the samples such as barnyard, brothy, brown, grain, soy, vitamin, off-flavors oxidized oil, cardboard and stale, and attributes appropriate for only a few products such as liver, fish, burnt, spice brown, garlic, celery, clove and smoky. The product category often showed a blended sensory profile and overall impact was evaluated to better discriminate among the products. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONSOne of the most competitive and economically relevant industries of food processing is pet food production. Although there are physiological sensory differences among Canis familiaris and Homo sapiens, human sensory data can be useful for several purposes. This research provides a lexicon that can be used as a starting point to describe the appearance, texture, aroma and flavor characteristics of dry dog food products when such information is needed for quality control, shelf life, product development or claims substantiation. This information is useful to product developers, researchers and technologists in understanding these characteristics and using those attributes to improve dry dog food products. bs_bs_banner Journal of Sensory Studies

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“…These tests are, however, expensive to maintain, time consuming (Booth, 1976), and yield limited and often equivocal data. In addition, individual animal variation, previous diet or experience, and lateral bias complicate the protocols (Rofe and Anderson, 1970). In conventional flavour research using animals, considerable time and effort is also involved in isolating the required quantities of aroma and fractions, and large amounts of material are required because of concentration-dependent quality changes (Booth, 1976).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimizing the sensory characteristics and acceptance of canned cat food: use of a human taste panel

Pickering

2009

Animal Physiology Nutrition

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SummaryA methodology based on descriptive analysis techniques used in the evaluation of human food has been successfully refined to allow for a human taste panel to profile the flavour and texture of a range of cat food products (CFP) and their component parts. Included in this method is the development of evaluation protocols for homogeneous products and for binary samples containing both meat chunk (MC) and gravy/gel (GG) constituents. Using these techniques, 18 flavour attributes (sweet, sour/acid, tuna, herbal, spicy, soy, salty, cereal, caramel, chicken, methionine, vegetable, offaly, meaty, burnt flavour, prawn, rancid and bitter) and four texture dimensions (hardness, chewiness, grittiness and viscosity) were generated to describe the sensations elicited by 13 commercial pet food samples. These samples differed in intensity for 16 of the 18 flavour attributes, which allows for individual CFP flavour profiles to be developed. Principal components analysis (PCA) could successfully discriminate between samples within the PCA space and also reveal some groupings amongst them. While many flavour attributes were weakly correlated, a large number (describing both taste and retro-nasal aroma qualities) were required to adequately differentiate between samples, suggesting considerable complexity in the products assessed. For both MC and GG, differences between samples for each of the texture dimensions were also found. For MC, grittiness appears to be the most discriminating textural attribute, while for GG viscosity discriminates well between samples. Meat chunks and gravy/gels differed significantly from each other in both flavour and texture. Cat food products differed in their liking ratings, although no differences were found between homogeneous, MC and GG samples, and eight flavour attributes were correlated with overall liking scores. It is now necessary to determine the usefulness and limits of sensory data gathered from human panels in describing and predicting food acceptance and preference behaviours in cats. For instance, while the sense of taste in cats appears generally similar to that of other mammals, they lack a sweet taste receptor (Li et al., 2006), which may limit the applicability of sweetness ratings obtained from humans. Modification of existing techniques used with human food research, such as external preference mapping (Naes and Risvik, 1996) may be useful. Ultimately, this may facilitate more economical and efficient methods for optimizing cat food flavour and texture and predicting the effects of composition and processing changes on cat

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Food preference in domestic pets

Cited by 10 publications

References 16 publications

A functional comparison of the domestic cat bitter receptors Tas2r38 and Tas2r43 with their human orthologs

A functional comparison of the domestic cat bitter receptors Tas2r38 and Tas2r43 with their human orthologs

An Initial Lexicon for Sensory Properties of Dry Dog Food

Optimizing the sensory characteristics and acceptance of canned cat food: use of a human taste panel

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