{"id":3202,"date":"2017-08-15T06:13:29","date_gmt":"2017-08-15T11:13:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.diamondpet.wearewoodruff.xyz\/?p=3202"},"modified":"2026-02-17T10:08:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T16:08:20","slug":"pet-food-companies-flavors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.diamondpet.com\/blog\/nutrition\/flavor\/pet-food-companies-flavors\/","title":{"rendered":"How Do Pet Food Companies Determine Flavors?"},"content":{"rendered":"

American dogs and cats apparently adore chicken-flavored kibble and canned foods. Or at least that\u2019s the flavor<\/a> that their owners most often buy for them, according to sales data compiled by a leading pet industry research firm and reported in Petfood Industry<\/em> magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet a walk down the pet food aisles at your local pet store, with dozens of varieties and flavors, might leave you with a very different impression about the flavors of food American pet parents are feeding. With all the variety on store shelves, how do dog and cat owners decide what to buy? And how do pet food companies decide what flavor varieties they\u2019ll make?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe choice of flavors \u2014 at least here at Diamond Pet Foods \u2014 is prioritized based on meeting nutritional goals, audience demand and ingredient sustainability,\u201d said Mark Brinkmann, vice president of operations for Diamond Pet Foods. \u201cWe\u2019re always looking at trends in related categories such as human foods and finding ways to channel them into pet foods. For example, omega-3 fatty acids, glucosamine and chondroitin, probiotics, and roasted or smoked meats all were concepts in the human food category that we\u2019ve been able to use in our pet foods.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nutritional needs come first<\/h2>\n

The animal nutritionists and veterinarians at Diamond Pet Foods always make nutrition, not taste, their first priority when formulating foods for dogs and cats.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of the taste-enhancing additives (such as digest or flavorings) used to entice pets to choose one food over another provide limited nutritional value to the formulation,\u201d Brinkmann stated. \u201cThey also are expensive, adding to the price that pet parents pay for pet food.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emphasizing nutrition over taste, however, doesn\u2019t mean that taste (or palatability) doesn\u2019t matter. The most nutritious food in the world has no benefit if a dog or cat won\u2019t eat it.<\/p>\n

How much do dogs and cats really taste?<\/h3>\n

While we put a lot of importance on how food tastes, dogs and cats aren\u2019t nearly as discriminating (especially dogs, who will eat anything from filet mignon to last week\u2019s garbage). While humans have around 9,000 taste buds, dogs have about 1,700<\/a> and cats have roughly 470<\/a>. This means dogs and cats have much weaker senses of taste than we do. That said, dogs and cats do<\/em> taste food and even have specialized taste buds specifically for water, which we don\u2019t have. Dogs have four taste bud groups in common with people (sweet, sour, salty and bitter). In contrast, cats are unable to taste sweets, but can taste things we can\u2019t, such as ATP (adenosine triphosphate), the compound that supplies the energy in living cells, which signals the presence of meat.<\/p>\n

A food\u2019s smell and texture \u2014 sometimes referred to as \u201cmouthfeel\u201d \u2014 also influence what dogs and cats will eat. In fact, 70 to 75 percent of our ability to taste something comes from our sense of smell, and it\u2019s the combination of taste and smell that creates flavor. (You can test this concept by holding your nose closed while you eat a bite of food. Could you taste the food as well as when you didn\u2019t hold your nose closed?) Fortunately for dogs and cats, their superior, highly developed sense of smell makes up for having fewer taste buds.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, dogs and cats don\u2019t like the mouthfeel of sticky foods \u2014 which is rather surprising, given the number of dogs who will wolf down medication that\u2019s hidden in peanut butter. The shape and size of kibble also affects a cat\u2019s food preferences.<\/p>\n

Pet taste-testing panels provide \u201cpaws up\u201d approval<\/h3>\n

For decades, pet food manufacturers have used two-bowl palatability tests to determine which foods dogs or cats would prefer. During these tests, pets would be offered two bowls of food, each containing a different one. Researchers would note which bowl the dog or cat ate from first and how much of each food was eaten.<\/p>\n

Now, however, more pet food companies are moving away from palatability testing and toward consumption studies. In a consumption study, the pet is fed one food for two days, followed by a palate-cleansing diet for a day, then fed a second food for two days. The amount of each food consumed is measured and compared.<\/p>\n

\u201cA consumption study is a more reliable way to measure animal acceptance of a food, more so than animal preference,\u201d Brinkmann explained. \u201cThe palatability study was a grocery store concept used to generate marketing claims. As people have moved towards natural foods for themselves \u2014 most of which don\u2019t taste as good as junk food \u2014 they are not as easily swayed by a marketing claim touting \u2018better taste.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Pet food palatability has always been an intricate science. The shift in how Americans view their pets as family members, along with the increasing complexity of what pet parents want for their four-footed family members, has made pet food manufacturing and marketing even more complicated. That\u2019s why, ultimately, pet food manufacturers make products that not only appeal to your dog and\/or cat but also to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American dogs and cats apparently adore chicken-flavored kibble and canned foods. Or at least that\u2019s the flavor that their owners most often buy for them, according to sales data compiled by a leading pet industry research firm and reported in Petfood Industry magazine. Yet a walk down the pet food aisles at your local pet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5092,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"Learning How Pet Food Companies Determine Flavors","_seopress_titles_desc":"Discover how pet food companies select flavors for dog and cat foods, balancing nutrition and taste. Also, learn more about Diamond Pet Foods' approach!","_seopress_robots_index":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_searchwp_excluded":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[237,27],"tags":[100,10,197],"class_list":["post-3202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flavor","category-nutrition","tag-cat","tag-dog","tag-flavor"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondpet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondpet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondpet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondpet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondpet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondpet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondpet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondpet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondpet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondpet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}