Aspartame is an artificial non-saccharide sweetener 200 times sweeter than sucrose, and is commonly used as a sugar substitute in foods and beverages. It is a methyl ester of the aspartic acid/phenylalanine dipeptide with the trade names NutraSweet, Equal, and Canderel. Aspartame was first made in 1965 and approved for use in food products by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1981.
An essential amino acid, or indispensable amino acid, is an amino acid that cannot be synthesized from scratch by the organism fast enough to supply its demand, and must therefore come from the diet. Of the 21 amino acids common to all life forms, the nine amino acids humans cannot synthesize are phenylalanine, valine, threonine, tryptophan, methionine, leucine, isoleucine, lysine, and histidine.
The net protein utilization, or NPU, is the ratio of amino acid mass converted to proteins to the mass of amino acids supplied. This figure is somewhat affected by the salvage of essential amino acids within the body, but is profoundly affected by the level of limiting amino acids within a foodstuff.
A dietary supplement is a manufactured product intended to supplement one's diet by taking a pill, capsule, tablet, powder, or liquid. A supplement can provide nutrients either extracted from food sources or that are synthetic in order to increase the quantity of their consumption. The class of nutrient compounds includes vitamins, minerals, fiber, fatty acids, and amino acids. Dietary supplements can also contain substances that have not been confirmed as being essential to life, but are marketed as having a beneficial biological effect, such as plant pigments or polyphenols. Animals can also be a source of supplement ingredients, such as collagen from chickens or fish for example. These are also sold individually and in combination, and may be combined with nutrient ingredients. The European Commission has also established harmonized rules to help insure that food supplements are safe and appropriately labeled.
Food energy is chemical energy that animals derive from their food to sustain their metabolism, including their muscular activity.
Cat food is food for consumption by cats. Cats have specific requirements for their dietary nutrients. Certain nutrients, including many vitamins and amino acids, are degraded by the temperatures, pressures and chemical treatments used during manufacture, and hence must be added after manufacture to avoid nutritional deficiency.
Protein digestibility-corrected amino acid score (PDCAAS) is a method of evaluating the quality of a protein based on both the amino acid requirements of humans and their ability to digest it.
Nitrogen balance is a measure of nitrogen input minus nitrogen output.
A complete protein or whole protein is a food source of protein that contains an adequate proportion of each of the nine essential amino acids necessary in the human diet.
Biological value (BV) is a measure of the proportion of absorbed protein from a food which becomes incorporated into the proteins of the organism's body. It captures how readily the digested protein can be used in protein synthesis in the cells of the organism. Proteins are the major source of nitrogen in food. BV assumes protein is the only source of nitrogen and measures the amount of nitrogen ingested in relation to the amount which is subsequently excreted. The remainder must have been incorporated into the proteins of the organisms body. A ratio of nitrogen incorporated into the body over nitrogen absorbed gives a measure of protein "usability" – the BV.
Proteins are essential nutrients for the human body. They are one of the building blocks of body tissue and can also serve as a fuel source. As a fuel, proteins provide as much energy density as carbohydrates: 4 kcal per gram; in contrast, lipids provide 9 kcal per gram. The most important aspect and defining characteristic of protein from a nutritional standpoint is its amino acid composition.
Protein combining or protein complementing is a dietary theory for protein nutrition that purports to optimize the biological value of protein intake. According to the theory, vegetarian and vegan diets may provide an insufficient amount of some essential amino acids, making protein combining with multiple foods necessary to obtain a complete protein food. The terms complete and incomplete are outdated in relation to plant protein. The position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is that protein from a variety of plant foods eaten during the course of a day supplies enough of all essential amino acids when caloric requirements are met.
Soy protein is a protein that is isolated from soybean. It is made from soybean meal that has been dehulled and defatted. Dehulled and defatted soybeans are processed into three kinds of high protein commercial products: soy flour, concentrates, and isolates. Soy protein isolate has been used since 1959 in foods for its functional properties.
Glutamate flavoring is the generic name for flavor-enhancing compounds based on glutamic acid and its salts (glutamates). These compounds provide an umami (savory) taste to food.
Protein quality is the digestibility and quantity of essential amino acids for providing the proteins in correct ratios for human consumption. There are various methods that rank the quality of different types of protein, some of which are outdated and no longer in use, or not considered as useful as they once were thought to be. The Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS), which was recommended by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), became the industry standard in 1993. FAO has recently recommended the newer Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score (DIAAS) to supersede PDCAAS. The dairy industry is in favor of this, because while PDCAAS truncates all protein types that exceed the essential amino acid (EAA) requirements to 1.0, DIAAS allows a higher than 1.0 ranking: while for example both soy protein isolate and whey isolate are ranked 1.0 according to PDCAAS, in the DIAAS system, whey has a higher score than soy.
Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score (DIAAS) is a protein quality method proposed in March 2013 by the Food and Agriculture Organization to replace the current protein ranking standard, the Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS).
Hemp protein is the protein content of hemp seeds. The protein in hemp seeds is made up of the two globular types of proteins, edestin (60–80%) and 2S albumin, with edestin also being rich in the essential amino acids. Hemp protein has a PDCAAS score of 0.61 and a biological value of 87. The total proportion of essential amino acids in hemp protein isolate, is also significantly higher than that of soy protein isolate.
Amino acid score, in combination with protein digestibility, is the method used to determine if a protein is complete. PDCAAS and DIAAS are the two major protein standards which determine the completeness of proteins by their unique composition of essential amino acids.
The developmental life stage of dogs requires a specific intake of nutrients to ensure proper growth and development and to meet energy requirements. Despite the fact that puppies have different nutritional requirements compared to their adult counterparts, of the 652 breeders surveyed in the United States and Canada in 2012, 8.7% report feeding puppies commercial diets not intended for the developmental life stage of canines. Large and small dog breeds have even more specific nutrient requirements during growth, such as adjusted calcium to phosphorus ratio, and as such should receive a breed specific growth formula. Feeding diets formulated by a nutritionist for specific breed and life stage differences in nutrient requirements ensures a growing puppy will receive the proper nutrition associated with appropriate skeletal, neurological and immune development. This includes nutrients such as protein, fibre, essential fatty acids, calcium and vitamin E. It is therefore important to feed puppies a diet that meets the minimum and/or maximum requirements established by the National Research Council.
