HEALTH & NUTRITION
Health and nutrition
Health and nutrition ingredients for a defined physiological job.
A health target is really a formulation constraint. Life stage, calorie density, digestibility and stool quality all resolve into ingredient choices, and most of them are carbohydrate and fiber choices.
Explore formulation approaches for digestive health, mobility, palatability and every life stage.
Start with the animal, then the process
Digestive health is a fiber and fermentation question
Nutritional adequacy is a defined target rather than a claim. A complete and balanced formula has to deliver every essential nutrient at or above a minimum, and below a maximum where excess is a problem, in the amount the animal actually eats to meet its energy needs.
That last clause is the one that catches people. A dog or a cat eats to satisfy energy, not nutrient mass. So every requirement is really a nutrient-per-calorie requirement, and energy density is the hidden variable underneath a percentage on a dry matter basis. Raise the fat, the portion gets smaller, and a formula that reads compliant on paper delivers less of everything per meal.
The clean way to avoid the trap is to run your constraints per 1,000 kcal of metabolizable energy and convert to dry matter percentages only for the label and the profile check.
Fiber does most of the work in stool quality and gut transit time. Soluble fiber ferments in the hindgut and feeds the microbiome. Insoluble fiber adds bulk and moves things along. Get the ratio wrong and you trade one problem for another: too much fermentable fiber and you get gas and loose stool, too little and you lose the stool-firming benefit the formula was supposed to deliver.
Life stage
Mobility support is an inclusion-rate problem
Life stage is the first constraint, and it decides more of the formula than most people expect.
AAFCO defines two nutrient profiles, not four. Growth and reproduction is one. Adult maintenance is the other. “All life stages” is not a third profile, it means the product meets the stricter growth and reproduction numbers. An all life stages claim therefore tightens your calcium ceiling rather than loosening anything. There is also a separate qualifier for growth of large size dogs, with a tighter calcium maximum again, because excess calcium and a skewed calcium to phosphorus ratio in large breed puppies is linked to developmental skeletal disease.
Senior is not an AAFCO life stage. A senior diet is formulated to adult maintenance and differentiated on energy density, protein quality, phosphorus, fiber and joint or cognitive positioning. That is a marketing and formulation decision you own, not a profile you can point at.
The floors underneath those profiles, on a dry matter basis: minimum crude protein is 18% for adult dogs and 22.5% for growth and reproduction. For cats it is 26% and 30%. Minimum crude fat is 5.5% for adult dogs and 8.5% for growth. Cats also carry a taurine minimum that dogs do not, at roughly 0.10% in extruded food and 0.20% in canned. Those come from the AAFCO Dog and Cat Food Nutrient Profiles, and they are floors rather than targets.
Growth and reproduction. Higher protein and fat floors, tighter mineral windows, and the least room for error. Calcium has both a floor and a ceiling here, and the ratio to phosphorus is as binding as either number on its own. Bioavailability matters more than usual, because phytate-bound phosphorus and oxide mineral forms assay fine and absorb badly.
Adult maintenance. The widest formulation latitude, and where most cost work happens. The trap is formulating to the minimum. Minimums assume good ingredients and no processing loss, so a no-margin formula fails at end of shelf life or on an off-spec lot.
Weight and calorie management. In the APOP 2022 US survey, 59% of dogs and 61% of cats were classified as overweight or having obesity, up from 56% of dogs in 2018. Calorie dilution is a fiber and starch problem, and the Grains and fibers page sets out what it costs: most fiber costs you expansion, and which fiber you choose decides how much.
Cats are a different species, not a smaller dog. You cannot down-spec a cat food from a dog base. The cat lost or turned down several biosynthetic pathways the dog kept, so taurine, arginine, arachidonic acid, preformed vitamin A and niacin are dietary essentials for cats and dispensable for dogs. The cat’s obligatory protein floor is higher for the same reason, driven by liver enzymes that stay switched on even when protein intake drops. None of that is a matter of degree. It is biochemistry, and it changes the ingredient list rather than the inclusion rate.
The practical consequence for anyone sourcing: preformed vitamin A, arachidonic acid and baseline taurine sit in animal tissue. Carotenoid sources and plant oils do not cover them for a cat.
Joint support ingredients earn their place in a large-breed or senior formula, where cartilage wear is a documented problem. Put the same inclusion rate in a formula built for small-breed puppies and you are paying for a benefit that customer does not need yet. The dose has to match the animal on the label, not just appear somewhere in the ingredient deck.
Where it gets harder than a spec sheet
Palatability decides whether nutrition reaches the bowl
A specification tells you what went into the mixer. The animal eats what came off the line, and those are not the same document.
Cooking moves the three macronutrients in opposite directions. Heat and moisture gelatinize starch, which is almost entirely good news: the granules swell, lose their ordered structure and become far more digestible. Moderate heat denatures protein, which improves enzyme access and knocks out trypsin inhibitors and lectins. Push further and the Maillard reaction bonds the lysine to reducing sugars, and that lysine is still counted by a standard total amino acid assay while being unavailable to the animal. Vitamins just degrade.
So the governing trade-off is blunt. You cannot fully cook the starch without loading heat onto the protein and the vitamins. What formulation controls is the starting point: how much reactive sugar you brought to the party, how much lysine headroom you left, and how big the vitamin overage is.
Available lysine is the one that bites. Total lysine looks fine on the certificate while reactive lysine has quietly dropped, and lysine is usually the first limiting amino acid. The damage does not track processing intensity the way you would expect. A survey of commercial products found pelleted dog food, the gentlest of the three processes, carrying the lowest ratio of reactive to total lysine at 0.85, and canned dog food the highest at 0.97, with extruded dog at 0.87, extruded cat at 0.91 and canned cat at 0.90. So you cannot read available lysine off the process. A growth diet can satisfy the profile on paper and fall short in the bowl, and the only way to know is to measure the finished product.
Taurine has to survive the process. Retort and Maillard chemistry both take taurine out. Canned cat targets are set above dry for the same nominal requirement, and the formula target sits above the label minimum rather than on it. Concentration is not the same as bioavailability here. Taurine bound into Maillard complexes assays as present.
Fiber trades against structure. Adding fiber to an extruded diet increases density and decreases expansion as the default finding. That comes mostly from insoluble fibers. Soluble fibers keep contributing to dough rheology through the extruder instead of just diluting the starch matrix. Choose on solubility rather than on total fiber and a weight formula keeps its piece.
Water activity is the control point in soft formats. Semi-moist products are shelf stable because free water is bound by humectants and the pH is pulled down, not because anything was sterilized. One hard constraint sits in the middle of that system: propylene glycol is prohibited in cat food by the FDA and permitted in dog food. Glycerin, syrups, sorbitol and salt do the job on the cat side.
Verify the product, not the spreadsheet. Analyze the finished extruded or retorted product for the labile nutrients. That is the only place you find out whether the formula survived.
A functional ingredient that the animal will not eat delivers nothing. Coatings, palatants, and the base formula's own aroma and texture all compete for the same bite, and a fiber source or joint ingredient with a strong off-note can undo a palatability program built around a completely different part of the recipe. Palatability testing has to happen with the full functional blend in place, not on the base kibble alone.
Where Calhu fits
Life stage changes the physiology, not just the portion
We work in vegetable and grain sources only. No meat products. That constraint is deliberate, and it means there are parts of a health formula we are not the right call for.
We do not supply the animal-origin nutrients a cat formula depends on. If you are building a plant-forward feline product, understand that every one of those essentials has to be replaced and proven bioavailable, which is a supplementation and QC problem rather than an ingredient swap. We will say so early rather than sell you into it.
What we do cover is most of what a health positioning actually runs on:
The carbohydrate system, which sets expansion, density, durability and how much of the cook you can afford. Starches native, pregelatinized, modified and specialty.
The fiber system, which is where calorie management, stool quality and digestive positioning are won or lost. Milled grains, brans, hulls, functional fibers and carriers.
Plant and fermentation-derived proteins, chosen for digestibility, flavor load and extrusion behavior rather than for protein content on the certificate.
Pulse flours, which do double duty as protein contribution and functional texture, and which behave differently enough between chickpea, pea, lentil and faba that they are not interchangeable at the same inclusion.
Sweeteners and humectants for palatability, water activity and semi-moist texture.
Behind the ingredient there is real formulation experience, and two corporations, one in Ontario and one in Michigan, so you buy in your own currency and your own regulatory environment.
Tell us the animal, the life stage and where in your process the problem shows up. Samples and specifications follow the conversation.
Native starch performs well in extrusion because the process itself supplies heat, moisture, and shear. Retort, baking, and wet formats don't offer the same conditions. A starch that expands well in a kibble can leave a gravy thin or a loaf too soft to hold its shape in those formats. Modified starches, cross-linked, pregelatinized, or acid-thinned, are built to perform reliably outside the extruder: holding viscosity through a retort cook, or setting a loaf without the heat and shear an extruder provides. Matching starch to the process it has to survive is part of the formulation work, not an afterthought.
Common questions
Where it gets harder than a spec sheet
How many life stages does AAFCO define for pet food?
Two. Growth and reproduction, and adult maintenance. “All life stages” is not a separate profile, it means the product meets the stricter growth and reproduction requirements. There is an additional qualifier for growth of large size dogs, which carries a tighter calcium ceiling.
Is “senior” a recognized life stage in pet food?
No. Senior diets are formulated to adult maintenance and then differentiated on energy density, protein quality, phosphorus, fiber and functional positioning. There is no separate AAFCO senior profile to formulate against.
Why does a cat formula need more protein than a dog formula?
Because the cat cannot turn down its own amino acid catabolism. The liver enzymes that break down amino acids stay highly active even when dietary protein is low, so the cat has a structurally higher obligatory protein demand. AAFCO’s adult cat minimum for crude protein is 26% on a dry matter basis against 18% for adult dogs.
Can the same formula be used for dogs and cats?
Not safely for the cat. Taurine, arginine, arachidonic acid, preformed vitamin A and niacin are dietary essentials for cats and synthesizable by dogs. A dog formula that is nutritionally adequate omits them or under-delivers them, and the arginine gap in particular acts fast.
Why is taurine set higher in canned cat food than in dry?
Because retort takes more of it out. Taurine is degraded by thermal processing and bound by Maillard reactions with reducing sugars, and canning is the harshest version of both. AAFCO minimums reflect this, at roughly 0.10% on a dry matter basis for extruded and 0.20% for canned. Formula targets are set above the minimum to cover the loss.
None of this holds still. Starch behaves differently lot to lot depending on growing conditions, moisture content, and how it was processed before it reached your dock, and a formula tuned to one shipment can behave differently with the next. Cooked starch also keeps changing after it leaves the extruder: some of the gelatinized structure slowly re-associates as the kibble cools and dries, a process called retrogradation, which is part of why texture can shift over shelf life. Push cook severity too far chasing consistency and you trade away nutrient availability and the starch's own digestibility. None of these trade-offs go away. They get managed, lot by lot, batch by batch, which is most of what a formulation partner is for.
Where Calhu fits
We supply native and modified starches across corn, tapioca, potato, and pea, tested against the kind of lot-to-lot variability described above, not just a spec sheet. Tell us your format and what isn't working, and we'll help you find the point on the amylose to amylopectin spectrum that solves it.
Let’s discuss your project.
Let’s discuss your project.
Tell us what you are making and where it is going wrong. We will come back with something specific.
Tell us what you are making and where it is going wrong. We will come back with something specific.