Soybean oil plays an infrequent and peripheral role in petfoods. This is somewhat surprising given its popularity in human foods and its prevalence on grocery store shelves alongside corn and canola oil. The ingrdient has no obvious health-related negatives and nutritionally could be a nice complement to diets based on marine proteins if one wanted to balance the omega-6 and -3 fatty acids. This is because soybean oil is a rich source of the omega-6 linoleic acid (C18:2n6; 56% of total fatty acids).
Perhaps due to this fatty acid profile, soybean oil is found in a few special purpose therapeutic pet diets; but it doesn’t seem to hit the radar of the so-called premium or holistic petfoods. One can probably attribute this to misplaced concerns about hypersensitivities often attributed (some correctly and some incorrectly) to soybean proteins. Should we be concerned about the use of soybean oil in petfoods, or is there an opportunity to take advantage of a high-quality ingredient literally right under our noses?
