Palatants and flavourings

Palatants and flavourings are substances added to a food to improve its taste and smell and so encourage the animal to eat it, without providing significant nutritional value of their own. They are a quietly central technology in pet food, because even a perfectly balanced recipe is worthless if the animal refuses to eat it, and palatability is one of the hardest things to get right, particularly for cats, which are famously discerning eaters. Palatants are often based on animal materials, such as hydrolysed liver or other digest, sprayed onto the surface of a kibble after cooking, and they exploit the strong role that smell and the so-called mouthfeel play in how a dog or cat judges food. Cats and dogs differ markedly here: cats respond strongly to certain animal-derived flavours and the amino-acid profile of a food, and they cannot taste sweetness, whereas dogs are more catholic and somewhat sweet-responsive in their preferences. This is why palatability is tested on dedicated taste panels of animals rather than guessed at. On a label, these appear as palatants, digest, natural flavouring or similar terms among the additives or ingredients, and they sit alongside [colourants](/glossary/colourants), which by contrast target the human buyer's eye rather than the animal's appetite. See the [Petipedia glossary](/glossary) for related additive entries.

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