Alnutrin And Pet Diet Designer

[mschauer]

You're right about the calories.

I couldn't resist mucking with it some more. I created a recipe with Alnutrin, chicken thighs and chicken liver at the amounts the Alnutrin folks recommend but scaled for 1 days worth, 4 oz for my cat. The analysis came up low in several nutrients but not the ones you mentioned.

I noticed up at the top there is a target calorie value for my cat that is greater than what I feed. I increased the feeding amount until the "target" calories were met. That cleared up all the nutrient deficiencies except for vit K and choline. Vit K doesn't matter. Don't know why it says choline is low. NRC and AAFCO recommendations are the same and my program's analysis doesn't show it low.

The values being shown are as a percentage of what is expected if the target calories are fed. Feeding anything less than the target will probably result in the program showing deficiencies.

After going through this, I don't think PDD is appropriate for our use. We want to analysis a batch, not one meal at a time. I think you're right, we'll have to wait for the updates. Those updates have been promised for a long time though.

 

[sabrinah]

The blog says the Pet Diet 365 programs will be released in 2019. They haven't even set prices yet, so who knows if it'll even be worth it to keep updating it. I don't plan on using Alnutrin forever and I want to eventually make my own recipes for critters, which was the whole point of getting the program. I hope the update is really good. I think I'm just going to cross my fingers and try not to open the program again until it's updated.

 

[mschauer]

It might be worthwhile. Their approach is actually correct. We should take into account how much of our home-made food our cats eat when determining how nutrient dense it needs to be. If they eat less because they need fewer calories, they still need the same amount of nutrients so the food should be more nutrient dense.

 

[sabrinah]

I was really concerned about making sure the fat I add in wasn't screwing thing up too bad. I included it's weight when measuring the Alnutrin but I always worry. Around here the only easily available (and decently priced) chicken is chicken breasts with next to no fat. The only way she isn't screaming at me because she thinks she's starving to death is if I add in enough pork or beef fat so that 50% of calories are from fat. Without the extra fat added in she was eating 5 oz of raw plus 1/4 cup of dry a day and she gained weight very quickly. I'm not that awful at math, but having a program to double check sounded useful. I might keep messing with PDD.

I don't understand though why your Alnutrin recipe came up mostly balanced while mine still shows a mess no matter how I look at it. I've checked everything multiple times so I know I didn't screw up anywhere. Maybe the program is glitchy?

 

[mschauer]

Note: In the below I ignore what PDD says about vit K because it doesn't matter.

First, I found out why PDD was saying my cats diet was low in choline. The Alnutrin pkg doesn't list how much choline it contains. It does contain some though. I added 527.3 mg choline per 100g (which I got from manufacturer) and the MR is OK, RA is 93.3%.

Here's what I did. I started with the basic chicken recipe from Alnutrin:

2765 g chicken thighs ( I used skinless entry from Food list )
218 g chicken liver
40 g Alnutrin w/Calcium

That is a total of 3023 g. My cat eats 113 g a day, so I scaled that by 17.7 to get:
155.3 g chicken
18.2 g chicken liver
2.25 g Alnutrin

At that point PDD shows fat,iron, copper, zinc, and choline low as per MR.

But, PDD shows that my 10 lb cat needs 237 kcal but the food is only providing 132 kcals. So, using trial and error, I scaled up how much I feed from 113 g to 201.47 g to get 237 kcals. That is:
184.3 g chicken
14.5 g liver
2.67 g Alnutrin

After doing that PDD shows MR is satisfied and RA is satisfied except for choline which it shows as 93.3%.

So, basically, PDD takes the information we enter for our cats and comes up with a daily required number of calories. If we don't feed at least that amount the diet may come up short in some nutrients.

 

[mschauer]

sabrinah - After playing with PDD some more, I agree with you that it isn't so bad once you get used to it. The main thing for me continues to be how non-intuitive the interface is. I did read the blog entry you mentioned where they said they are going to address that. I have more hope for the future usefulness of it now than I did before.

And thanks for posting the screenshots. I had already worked out to add ingredients but I appreciate you taking the time to do that. It's really bizarre that the Recipe module isn't where you create the recipe. That's what I was expecting. From the blog entry I think the new interface won't use the "module" concept but rather will be more work flow oriented.

Have you had any more luck using it?

 

[sabrinah]

I haven't been able to play around with it for a couple of days because some relatives are visiting. I exhausted my grandpa by dragging him to the DMV and Costco so I'll mess with it for an hour or two while he takes a nap.

 

[sabrinah]

I finally got it to cooperate. It's ridiculous that PDD thinks my cat needs 8 oz a day.

I'm kinda frustrated. I have to add extra fat because the only reasonable and easily available chicken here is breasts with zero fat and she's starving without around 50% of calories from fat. Fat counts toward muscle meat. Even if I include the weight of the fat in the meat weight while calculating Alnutrin and liver amounts, it ends up unbalanced. Iron, Copper, Zinc, and Folic Acid are low (I've given up on Choline, Iodine, and Vitamin K). It takes an extra 0.8g of Alnutrin to balance that stuff, but then the Ca: P ratio is too high. At an extra 0.7g of Alnutrin, the Ca: P ratio is in the acceptable range but Zinc is low. Kinda frustrated is an understatement. I'm very frustrated.

 

[mschauer]

I understand your frustration. I know what the problem is. I'll post again this weekend after I have some time to work on it.

 

[sabrinah]

MORE LIVER! That's how to make the ratio better! The ratio is 1.341:1 instead of 1:1, but it's still within the acceptable range. Everything is within the safe upper limits according to PDD, and fiber is at 4%, which is roughly what she seems to need at this age. Biotin, Iodine, Choline, and Vitamin K are a lost cause. Now that the chicken recipe is done, I just have to repeat it with pork, beef, and turkey

 

[mschauer]

Congratulations! I don't think you need to give up on the other nutrients except vitamin K. You might be better off using Alnutrin without calcium, use enough of it to get the nutrient balance you want except for calcium and add a calcium supplement to get the Ca: P you want.

You really don't need to worry about vit K. It is one of the vitamins that the body produces. It only needs to be added if the food is high in fish because fish contains <something, forgot what> that interferes with utilization of vitamin K.

 

[sabrinah]

I think I'm going to end up doing that once I use up this bag. It'll be a few months though because I just bought this new bag. And I'll certainly be ignoring Vitamin K!

Beef and turkey weren't too much of a pain. Pork is killing me though! I can't get choline levels at an acceptable level and the harder I try, the higher Arachidonic Acid goes above the safe upper limit of 3333%

 

[mschauer]

Are you still trying to balance what is only a part of your cats diet? If so, you may be over supplementing because you aren't taking into account the nutrients in the dry food you feed. And by over supplementing, I don't mean you are necessarily exceeding maximums. Just that you may be supplementing more than needed.

 

[sabrinah]

I'm trying to balance as if it was her entire diet since someday it might be.

Choline and AA just really don't get along in pork. When I finally got Choline adequate (at 66 calories over their already super high recommended amount), AA was over 4300%. Taking out the heart and gizzard lowers to 3900% but I just can't get the two to play nicely. When AA and calories (the PDD recommended 260) are where they should be, Choline is only 50-60%

 

[mschauer]

I really think you wasting your time given the limitations of the current version of PDD. Given all the fudging you're doing I'm not sure the results you are seeing are even meaningful.

 

[sabrinah]

I don't know if it's meaningful either. It kinda turned into a personal challenge, but with the stupid pork recipe the challenge isn't fun anymore.

 

[mschauer]

Sorry, I know it isn't funny.

 

[mschauer]

Oh, something else about PDD that you may realize. It doesn't tell you when incomplete nutrient information is available for a selected ingredient. Like how with Alnutrin the package label doesn't list choline so when we add it to PDD we can't add how much choline it has. So PDD may show a recipe as low in choline when it actually isn't because of the incomplete information.

I just used Alnutrin as an example. There are many ingredients in the USDA database (which is what PDD uses) with incomplete nutrient profiles.

 

[sabrinah]

I hope they add that into the update! I might try to do a rabbit recipe now...Not that I even use rabbit, but it's kinda fun.

 

[mschauer]

I can tell you, there are a lot of missing nutrients in the rabbit entry...