A new study published in the US this year has looked to assess the amino acid (protein) digestibility and metabolizable energy of two vegan dog foods.
Researchers took two mildly cooked human-grade vegan diets and compared them to a dry chicken kibble diet. They used a standardised method for measuring amino acid digestibility and metabolizable energy of the diets with 12 in each group and 24 in total.
All three diets were confirmed to surpass AAFCO and FEDIAF guidelines for amino acid content prior to ingestion. Results showed that indispensable amino acid digestibility was high for the two vegan diets and similar to that of the control meat based diet. Other studies have shown a potential for the amino acid methionine to have lower digestibility in vegan diets, however this study showed no statistical differences vs the control diet.
It should be noted that the two vegan diets tested used primarily pulses and legumes as protein sources, which often have to be processed/cooked in the correct way and combined with other complementary proteins to be most bioavailable. However other plant-based protein sources like soy, often used in other vegan pet foods, have been shown to be highly digestible, in some cases even having a higher digestibility than a poultry diet when assessed in dogs.
Total metabolizable energy was good across all diets but was higher in the two vegan diets compared to the control diet.
Overall researchers concluded that “mildly cooked human-grade vegan diets tested in the current study performed well, easily meeting the CP and amino acid needs of dogs according to AAFCO and FEDIAF, having high amino acid digestibility’s, and having high energy contents that exceeded current ME equations and estimates”.
While rooster protocols used provide standard and comparable figures for these types of analyses, the next step for this study is to compare figures in dogs.
