Many pet foods contain sugars. Some for taste (dogs do have a “sweet tooth”), but more often for functional reasons. For example, in semi-moist foods we use sugars such as glycerol and propylene glycol, or syrups from corn or sugar beets as humectants. There is another class of sugars that are used extensively in the human foods industry, but seldom in pet foods, that might provide benefit under special food and nutritional circumstances. These sugars are the maltodextrins.
Maltodextrins are a hydrolyzed sugar of limited molecular chain length originating from various starches like corn, oats, rice, potato and tapioca. They are approved for use in pet foods (e.g., AAFCO 2017; 48.25) as “a purified concentrated aqueous solution of nutritive saccharides, or dried product derived from said solution, derived from starch having a dextrose equivalent of less than 20.” The key here is that the starch molecule has been clipped to a range of lengths between 3 and 20 glucose units. This has significant impact. Once trimmed and shortened by hydrolysis, it creates new opportunities for utilization.
