What Makes Some Cat Foods Irresistible To Our Finicky Felines?
A panel of cat taste-testers are helping scientists to identify specific flavor compounds that could revolutionize the way we formulate cat food for our finicky furballs.
Β© by GrrlScientist for Forbes | LinkTr.ee
Is your cat a picky eater? If you live with cats, then you know getting them to eat can be a common problem. Cats have a more acute sense of smell than humans, and the aroma of their food plays a big role in whether theyβll eat it. Studies show that feline palates are also more sensitive to umami (savory) flavors than humans, and they canβt taste sweetness. But is there a way to create a nutritious cat food that actually appeals to your cat?
Well, yes. A team of researchers with the College of Food Science at Northeast Agricultural University and the School of Perfume and Aroma Technology at the Shanghai Institute of Technology are currently investigating which cat food flavor sprays are most favored by cats. To do this, they teamed up with a panel of 10 hungry feline taste-testers to evaluate a series of food sprays containing different volatile flavor compounds.
The scientists prepared their food sprays by homogenizing and heat-treating chicken livers. They then broke down the proteins in the liver paste using enzymes to produce four different foodβ¦
