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Sprÿng powered by Ÿnsect is launching its wet protein ingredient for pet food, WetPro15. WetPro15 combines nutritional excellence with a low environmental “pawprint”. It also has similar functionality to widely-used animal ingredients. That is why Sprÿng is an ideal substitute for traditional protein sources in pet food.
WetPro15 is a high-quality nutritional source for pets while also being environmentally sustainable.
The challenge of “nutritional sustainability1” for the pet food industry is how to produce premium quality products without compromising environmental sustainability. We have reported previously that pet food ingredients made from mealworm protein can bridge the gap between these competing pressures2. Here we revisit the subject with a particular focus on Sprÿng’s new palatable wet pet food ingredient, WetPro15. Supplied to pet food manufacturers as a frozen pulp, WetPro15 occupies a similar position in the pet food market to meats.
WetPro15 is made from blanching and grinding whole mealworms bred in our biosecure French insect farms3. The pulp is high in protein (60% in dry matter) and low in fat (8%). In terms of protein quality, mealworm protein has an excellent digestibility, competitive with the highest-quality traditional protein sources, such as lamb and beef4. Specifically, WetPro15’s ileal and peptic digestibility, both in vitro and in vivo, have been measured to be greater than 90%. The fat profile of WetPro15 is also advantageous. Not only its overall fat content is lower than meat ingredients, making its protein-to-fat ratio markedly higher than these competitors (Figure 1), it is also a healthier type of fat: mealworms are a natural source of linoleic acid—one of the essential fatty acids—and oleic acid, a w-9 unsaturated fatty acid.
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In terms of its environmental “pawprint”, Figure 2 shows that mealworm larvae require only about 5-10% of the land area required by lamb and beef, and 10-20% of the water consumption.
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A Life Cycle Analysis has shown that the climate change contribution of WetPro15 is equivalent to 0.8 kg CO2-eq per 1kg of WetPro15. As shown in Figure 3, this is equivalent to chicken mechanically deboned meats (MDM), significantly lower than lamb MDM and much lower than pure meats5.
WetPro15 is functionally transparent for the pet food manufacturers.
Clearly, using WetPro15 as a pet food ingredient is an excellent option from the point of view of nutritional sustainability. Of course, this is not the only factor determining whether pet food manufacturers will adopt it: it is also important to know what modifications they would need to make to their existing recipes and protocols. We are pleased to report that the binding properties and consistency of WetPro15 are similar to those of ingredients that pet food manufacturers are currently using, meaning that from a functional standpoint, a transition to incorporating WetPro15 into existing recipes should be relatively seamless. To demonstrate this, we carried out tests in which we compared a typical pet food pâté made using chicken MDM (at a final concentration of 50%), with test pâtés in which a portion of the chicken MDM was replaced with WetPro15; the final concentration of WetPro15 in the test pâtés was either 10%, 20%, 30% or 40%.
In every case, the pâté exhibited good binding properties, with the pâtés containing WetPro15 being slightly more homogeneous, compact and softer than the reference pâté. These properties help to optimize the production and minimize waste.
We also measured the protein and fat content of the diets containing WetPro15. As seen in Figure 5, all the pâtés maintained the same crude protein content as the recipes made with chicken MDM, while the fat content was markedly reduced with an increasing proportion of WetPro15. This opens the possibility for WetPro15 to have a role in weight management6. Indeed, the high-protein, low-fat profile of WetPro15 makes it an ideal ingredient for wet pet food formulas. This composition allows for easy customization to meet specific dietary needs of pets. For example, the low fat content enables pet food manufacturers to add essential fatty acids required by certain diets (e.g. for kittens and puppies). Furthermore, since insect protein is a novel protein source for most pets, WetPro15 could also be the basis of a hypoallergenic diet7
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In conclusion, WetPro15 offers pet food manufacturers a versatile ingredient of super premium nutritional quality and low environmental impact. By including WetPro15 in their formulations, manufacturers can expand their portfolio of high-quality products with minimal modifications to existing processes.
Bénédicte Lorrette is Animal Nutrition & Health R&D Director at Ynsect. She joined Ynsect more than 5 years ago as a researcher specialized in insect product analysis and characterization. Today, in this role, Bénédicte is responsible for leading research and development programs to deepen the knowledge of current insect products and to adapt them to the different and the new animal markets for insects (aquaculture, petfood, swine and poultry). Bénédicte’s scientific expertise and knowledge of Ynsect’s ingredients and processes also enables her to provide support to the business development, regulatory and intellectual property teams. Prior to joining Ynsect, Bénédicte worked in various research and technical roles with public, academic and private companies. Bénédicte holds an Engineer diploma of Food Science and a Master of Science in Food Science and Biotechnology from ENSAIA, Nancy (Lorraine University), followed by a PhD in Analytical Chemistry from Avignon University.
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