Low Temperature Cooking Process

Most commercial manufacturers of pet foods either employ a baking process that requires high temperatures or conventional extrusion process that involves high speed and high temperatures to reduce production costs. At these high temperatures, vitamins and minerals are destroyed and nutritional deficiencies can occur.

At Pet Eats, we use a slow-cooking process that is combined with lower cooking temperatures to produce a high nutrient-dense product that is more digestible with less volume. Though pet food can be cooked successfully at a higher temperature, keeping it below 270 degrees reduces the risk of “trapping” proteins, thereby making them more bioavailable. Water-soluble vitamins are affected by heat, and are therefore formulated in compensatory levels. This means we add in more because we know what will be lost during the cooking process. Pet Eats uses sequestering to protect vitamins and minerals in our food.

Protecting Vitamins (Sequestering vs. Chelating)
Sequestering and chelating are both processes which protect trace minerals. Chelation uses a tight uniform bonding strength while Sequestering uses light and tight bonding, which produces a more “timed release” in the digestive tract.

The Cooking Process
Dry pet food is extruded. Extrusion is a type of pressure steam cooking, done at lower temperatures to retain as many nutrients as possible. We use a very slow, low temperature extrusion process, carefully controlled to ensure thorough cooking and optimal nutritional availability and digestibility of the cat and dog food ingredients. The pet food ingredients are mixed and then cooked in an extruder and forced through a die to form the shape of the kibble.