One of the aspects of pet food labels that was not impacted by the new approach to AAFCO’s (the Association of American Feed Control Officials) Pet Food Label Modernization is the determination of calories in pet foods and treats, but perhaps it should have been.
Pet foods and treats in the U.S. must display metabolizable energy (ME) on the product label. Calculating calories in pet food is done using an approach well over 100 years old. Max Rubner and W.O. Atwater are the scientists credited for developing the foundations for ME equations that are still used today. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, new methods, such as respiration calorimetry, allowed great advances in nutrition science, leading to the establishment of the energy equivalents for macronutrients and development of equations to predict the calories from foods based on their content of protein, fat and carbohydrates.
