The Chemistry of Kibble[Visit PopularScience.com Thursday March 28 at noon EST for a live chat with Mary Roach. She'll answer all your questions about kibble chemistry her new book Gulp and more.] Despite the cryptic name and anonymous office-park architecture the nature of the enterprise located at AFB International is clear the moment you sit down for a meeting. The conference room smells like kibble. One wall entirely glass looks onto a small-scale kibble-extrusion plant where men and women in lab coats and blue sanitary shoe covers tootle here and there pushing metal carts. AFB makes flavor coatings for dry pet foods. To test the coatings the company needs to make small batches of plain kibble to put them on. The coated kibbles are then served to consumers: Spanky Thomas Skipper Porkchop Mohammid Elvis Sandi Bela Yankee Fergie Murphy Limburger and some 300 other dogs and cats that reside at the company's Palatability Assessment Resource Center (PARC) about an hour's drive from its St. Louisâ€�area headquarters.AFB's vice president at the time Pat Moeller a few other staff members and I are seated around an oval table. Moeller is middle-aged likable and plainspoken. He has a small mouth with naturally deep-red lips and a pronounced Cupid's bow but it would be inaccurate to say he has a feminine appearance. Rather he has the look of an Army man which he was when he helped develop foods for NASA's Apollo program. The fundamental challenge of the pet food professional Moeller is saying is to balance the wants and needs of pets with those of their owners. The two are often at odds. Dry cereal-based pet foods caught on during World War II when tin rationing put a stop to canning. Owners were delighted. Dry pet food was less messy and stinky and more convenient. As a satisfied Spratt's Patent Cat Food customer of yesteryear put it the little biscuits were both handy and cleanly. To meet nutritional requirements pet food manufacturers blend animal fats and meals with soy and wheat grains and vitamins and minerals. This yields a cheap nutritious pellet that no one wants to eat. Cats and dogs are not grain eaters by choice Moeller is saying. So our task is to find ways to entice them to eat enough for it to be nutritionally sufficient.  Pet foods come in a variety of flavors because that's what humans like and we assume pets like what we like. We're wrong.This is where palatants enter the scene.  AFB designs powdered flavor coatings for the edible extruded shapes. Moeller came to AFB from Frito-Lay where his job was to design well powdered flavor coatings for edible extruded shapes. There are he says a lot of parallels. Cheetos without the powdered coating have almost no flavor. Likewise the sauces in processed convenience meals are basically palatants for humans. The cooking process for the chicken in a microwaveable entrée imparts a mild to nonexistent flavor. The flavor comes almost entirely from the sauce by design. Says Moeller You want a common base that you can put two or three or more different sauces on and have a full product line.   Pet foods come in a variety of flavors because that's what humans like and we assume our pets like what we like. We're wrong. For cats especially Moeller says change is often more difficult than monotony. Sigh this article is harolding better kibble based off more meat products. Auroria's article is based off cheaper cardboard-ish kibble. Both are biased. If your dog is happy and healthy who cares?Must be doing something wrong I've fed all of my dogs kibble and not the expensive organic scientific stuff either. They have lived long healthy lives. Healthy enough that when I have to change vets they always comment on my pets' condition and say You must be feeding them the expensive organic scientific stuff! No no and nope.Thanks for the fascinating article. I laughed out loud a couple of times.While “The Chemistry of Kibble” [April 2013] provided an interesting insight into what most pet food manufacturers try to do to make their food palatable.  The article states that pet foods are mixed with “soy and wheat grains… [and that] cats and dogs are not grain eaters.”  I think it is worth noting that there are plenty of pet foods available that are grain-free that do not require tricks to “entice [pets] to eat enough for it to be nutritionally sufficient.”One wonders where Spanky Thomas Skipper Porkchop Mohammid Elvis Sandi Bela Yankee Fergie Murphy Limburger and some 300 other dogs and cats came from before they 'resided' in a lab cage at this facility and where they'll go once the lab is finished with them. There are plenty of good kibble manufacturers who make high quality food without using lab animals to taste-test. Given the ultimate consumers are pets at home it makes more sense to taste test to pooches with the diet and lifestyle of a pet rather than lab animal.This is an unnecessary article glorifying an extremely unnecessary 'science' industry created not for pet health or welfare but simply profit.Absolute garbage. Why must everything have some freekin' chemical to cover up the fact that it's made with more chemicals and processed crap? I like Doritos but I'm not going to live on them no matter how tasty they are. First off the first ingredient of these cheap kibble recipes is corn meal wheat is way down the list and K9's cannot digest cornmeal. It requires feeding them twice as much kibble to get the benificial protein that they need at the risk of overloading them on the carbohydrates that they do not need which not only is bad for them and causes weight gain but also much higher rates of digestive and health issues along with shortend life spans and quality of life in their later years. Cheap kibble is also way more expensive in reality because you do feed twice as much as you would with premium foods that are not quite double the price. If you feed a 90lb. dog 3 cups of cheap kibble twice a day along with canned food you could do the same job with just 2 cups of premium kibble twice a day with no canned food at all. Premium kibble is almost all protein this is the fuel K9's require for a long vibrant life. Not to mention that they leave alot less waste to clean up and are way less gassy. All of our rescues have come in overweight and lethargic compared to their healthy counterparts even at 4 and 5 years old they acted closer to 10 in vitality 2 months of premium and not only do they lose weight dramatically they regain their vibrance and playfullness coats improve and problem health issues diminish add to the overall reduction in the cost of caring for your best friend. Sure you can go cheap but your buddy will die sooner and the last years of his life will suck compared to a life of proper nutrition. Not one K9 trainer will ever recommend a cheap kibble brand even iams has corn meal in it. TIP: if you see a comercial for it it's garbage if it's sold in a grocery store it's garbage. Pet store and feed houses are where you find what you need they rarely carry grain based food. If you see corn anywhere in the ingredient list move on. Try it for a couple of months you will see the difference and you will spend less over time. The only downside is that your dog will be more energetic.I can change my cats' food any time I want as long as the new stuff costs more than the old stuff. The problem is I can never reverse the process.I thoroughly enjoyed this article and its insights. I turned away from kibble long ago and I'm glad that I did.... or you could just feed them what they would eat naturally: raw meat with the bone (never feed a dog cooked bones). Premium kibble is still kibble. The meat processing industry (for human consumption) generates about 47 billion pounds of waste per year of which 23% goes into pet foods. Ew. The term human grade ingredients has no meaning since the moment the product leaves the slaughterhouse and enters the pet food manufacturing plant it is no longer considered fit for human consumption. The article hits the nail on the head: kibble is convenient and less stinky for owners. Hence we all feed our dogs Cheerios with beef broth sprayed on. It's for our convenience not for the dog's benefit.I feed both our dogs on nothing but chicken thighs pork neck bones and occasional beef. They have sweet breath white teeth silky coats no hot spots no fleas bright eyes and calm energy. Best of all no recalls! It was scary to go raw at first because I'd bought into the notion that only pet food companies and their paid nutritional experts could tell me what was appropriate for a dog to eat. But in a natural state dogs do not need these nutritional experts. They know what to eat. They're scavengers predators and carnivores (not omnivores like bears). I say feed 'em what they want. And oooooh do they love crunching up a bone. Why would you deprive a dog of that?hi sam! very interesting and informative article. however I will comment for a different reason here. please convey this msg of mine to AFB International President or whomsoever it is relevant too. please also don't get the idea that I am trying to preach here or drag a scientific article into religion but we need to understand that whatever work we do we should not hurt (intentionally or unintentionally) someone's feelings who comes from a different culture or religion. please convey to the relevant person at AFB Int'l that they should not use names for dogs and cats that relate to or even resemble religious figures like Prophets (in the Bible or in the Quran). These were very special people who sacrificed their everything to bring God's message to humanity. As such they deserve our utmost respect. I hope you understand what I am talking about (take a look at the list of names and you will understand). A few years back I was very fond of reading MAD comics but I stopped buying them because they made a whole series on the Bible caricaturing all Biblical Prophets (who are also mentioned in the Quran and testified therein). Although my decision not to buy them probably made no difference to MAD but it was against the rule of not hurting someone's religious feelings and that's the least I could do. hope you understand. thank you and God Bless You.hi sam! very interesting and informative article. however I will comment for a different reason here. please convey this msg of mine to AFB International President or whomsoever it is relevant too. please also don't get the idea that I am trying to preach here or drag a scientific article into religion but we need to understand that whatever work we do we should not hurt (intentionally or unintentionally) someone's feelings who comes from a different culture or religion. please convey to the relevant person at AFB Int'l that they should not use names for dogs and cats that relate to or even resemble religious figures like Prophets (in the Bible or in the Quran). These were very special people who sacrificed their everything to bring God's message to humanity. As such they deserve our utmost respect. I hope you understand what I am talking about (take a look at the list of names and you will understand). A few years back I was very fond of reading MAD comics but I stopped buying them because they made a whole series on the Bible caricaturing all Biblical Prophets (who are also mentioned in the Quran and testified therein). Although my decision not to buy them probably made no difference to MAD but it was against the rule of not hurting someone's religious feelings and that's the least I could do. hope you understand. thank you and God Bless You.Suhaib
   While I am sure there intent was not to offend you as a person with common sense you must understand that the name Mohammad is the among the most common names in the world. What you are asking scientists to do is sacrifice their beliefs (or lack of beliefs) in order to no offend you. This would be the same as a Christian asking a Muslim not to eat chocolate during lent because the Christian gave it up seems silly right? Yes in a perfect world everyone every where would have a perfect understanding of everyone's religion and respect it unconditionally....but be real bro.....I'm not really sure why everyone is getting up in arms about this article nothing contained in it preaches buying one brand of kibble over another. It simply explains the process it goes through to make its product most appealing for the consumers and the problems it encounters between the different desires of the customers. Getting upset with a company for making cheap food that is healthy (relative term it will sustain them) and making it so the dogs WANT to eat it doesn't seem fair. It's called capitalism they are making a product to sell people people want it to be cheap and no smell like rotting meat but they want their dogs to eat it. You should be upset with your peers in society for being so naive. Remember POPULAR....(meaning people like it).....SCIENCE!....(technology chemistry and such)......their job is publish articles on how science is effecting the world and sell those articles (HEY theres that capitalism again and the whole POPULAR concept). Fucktards......@jkalfa89: hi thanks for the response. if I named a son of mine Isa (thats how Jesus Christ (PBUH) has been named in the Quran) all and sundry would know that I named my son after the Great Prophet. Isnt that so jkalfa89? (notice that I used an example of my son not of anything else. why? because we give utmost respect to all Prophets that's the level of respect we should have not even think of using anything offensive. hope you understand). so common sense also tells us that anyone named Mohammed is after our Prophet Mohammed. make sense? I am not against science scientific experiments thinking & knowledge or making a legal profit (esp when its for the public good including our furry friends) but in doing so one should not offend someone. and your chocolate example is not relevant because its not the same as insulting someone's Prophet (even if done unintentionally). We observe fasting in Ramadan (as you must know) but Christians Hindus eat freely here and no one thinks that's insulting because it doesn't apply to them. And if you're getting the impression that I have made this all up so that I can undermine Popsci or AFL's efforts or whatever believe me that's not my intent at all. Never even thought of it or interested in these dirty tricks. I am only upset at what I pointed out in my previous comments and I wish that Mary pass this msg on to AFL to stop using such names for animals. A muslim should never be against science God tells us to ponder over his creations (in the earth or beyond) in the Quran and that the shape of the earth is like an ostrich's egg (elliptical when most thought it was round). So my dear popsci member I hope you understand. God Bless You.