JP7628381B2 - Method for producing GABA-enriched pet food - Google Patents

Description

The present invention relates to a method for producing GABA-enriched pet food.

GABA (γ-aminobutyric acid) is known to have stress-relieving effects, and functional foods have been commercialized for it. There is also a demand for pet foods that contain GABA.
For example, an agent for improving aging behavior in elderly companion animals is known, which is characterized by containing, as an active ingredient, one or more substances selected from the group consisting of GABA _B receptor agonists, GABA _A receptor agonists, and GABA _A receptor enhancers (see, for example, Patent Document 1).
In the manufacturing method of pet foods containing GABA, GABA itself has been added in the past, but GABA is generally expensive and the pet food tends to be expensive.
Therefore, there is a need for a method for producing pet food that enriches GABA using relatively inexpensive existing materials, rather than adding GABA itself.
As a method for enriching GABA without adding GABA itself, although not for pet food, for example, a method for producing dough enriched in γ-aminobutyric acid is known, which is characterized by adding water to grain powder, then kneading the mixture to prepare dough, and producing 10 mg or more of γ-aminobutyric acid per 100 g of dough from glutamic acid in the dough (see, for example, Patent Document 2).
In addition, a method for producing wheat flour having a magnesium content of 500 mg/100 g or more is known, which comprises grinding wheat flour having a magnesium content of 200 mg/100 g or more to a median diameter of 50 μm or less, and then classifying the flour to separate a fraction having a particle size of 70 μm or less (see, for example, Patent Document 3).
In addition, by using wheat seeds soaked in water or warm water, germinated wheat or malt or other wheat processed products as food ingredients, a method is known in which the content of functional ingredients such as GABA and other target free amino acids in the food is increased during the food manufacturing process without using functional ingredients such as amino acids as additives, thereby producing foods with a high content of these functional ingredients (see, for example, Patent Document 4).

JP 2005-132747 A JP 2004-298138 A JP 2005-287496 A WO2005/060766 publication

The object of the present invention is to provide a method for producing pet food that produces and enriches GABA during the pet food production process without adding GABA itself.

As a result of extensive research conducted by the inventors in order to achieve the above-mentioned object, it was discovered that by mixing and grinding wheat flour , in which the wheat flour content in the raw materials is 65% by mass or more and the wheat flour having an ash content of 2% to 4% by mass or more is 15% by mass or more, with other materials, adding water to the mixture and extruding it using an extruder, and drying the mixture, it is possible to produce GABA and enrich GABA in the pet food manufacturing process without adding GABA itself, which led to the completion of the present invention.
Therefore, the present invention is a method for producing pet food, which includes the steps of mixing and grinding wheat flour, in which the wheat flour content in the raw materials is 65% by mass or more and the proportion of wheat flour having an ash content of 2% to 4% by mass or less is 15% by mass or more, with other materials, adding water to the mixture, extruding the mixture using an extruder, and drying the mixture.

The pet food manufacturing method of the present invention makes it possible to produce pet food enriched with GABA by generating GABA during the pet food manufacturing process without adding GABA itself.

The present invention will be described in detail below.
In the present invention, the pet food is food given to dogs and cats, and the raw materials other than the wheat flour can be any raw materials that have been used in pet foods in the past, and are not particularly limited.
Examples include corn, soybean meal, gluten feed, gluten meal, beet pulp, rice flour, rice bran, fish meal, chicken meal, pork meal, animal fats and oils, and the like.
These are mixed and then pulverized for use.
The grinding method is not particularly limited, and any grinding method that has been conventionally used can be used.

In the present invention, wheat flour is used as the raw material in an amount of 65% by mass or more in the raw materials. If the blending ratio of wheat flour is less than 65% by mass, the production of GABA will be insufficient, which is not preferred.
The wheat flour contains 15% by mass or more of wheat flour having an ash content of 2% by mass or more and 4% by mass or less. If the ash content is less than 15% by mass, the production of GABA is insufficient, which is not preferable.
Also, if the ash content is less than 2% by mass, the production of GABA is insufficient, which is undesirable.
In the present invention, the raw material refers to the raw material before addition of water.

Wheat flour with an ash content of 2% by mass or more and 4% by mass or less can be obtained from a fraction close to the bran (husk) during milling, but bran is also mixed in.
Therefore, if the ash content exceeds 4% by mass, the bran will be mixed in a large amount, making it difficult to expand, which is undesirable from the standpoint of manufacturability.
Also, possibly due to the influence of other enzymes in the bran, BAGA production is insufficient.
The method for measuring the ash content in the present invention may be a conventional method for measuring ash content, for example, a dry ashing method.
The type of wheat flour is not particularly limited, and for example, strong wheat flour, weak wheat flour, etc. can be used.

After the raw material is pulverized, water is added to the pulverized material and the pulverized material is extruded using an extruder. Any conventional method for extrusion molding using an extruder can be used, and there is no particular limitation on the method for using the extruder.
As for the method of adding water, a method of adding water to the raw material and then feeding it into the extruder, or a method of feeding the raw material into the extruder and then adding water using steam or hot water inside the extruder can be used.
The drying method is not particularly limited, and any drying method that has been conventionally used can be used.
For example, a hot air drying method can be mentioned.

The GABA content in typical pet foods is about 4.0 mg/100 g, but the GABA content in the pet food obtained by the method of the present invention is much higher.
There are no particular limitations on how the obtained pet food may be used, and it may be given to dogs and cats in the same manner as conventional pet foods.

The present invention will be described in more detail below with reference to examples, but the present invention is not limited to these examples.
[Examples 1 to 4, Comparative Examples 1 to 5]
The amounts of wheat flour, 18 parts by mass of corn, 15 parts by mass of beef meal, 1 part by mass of minerals, and 1 part by mass of vitamins shown in Table 1 were mixed and ground in a hammer mill.
20 parts by mass of water was added to 100 parts by mass of the raw material, and the mixture was extruded using a single-screw extruder (Wenger: X-20 type), cut and molded, and then dried in a hot air dryer (Espec: PH-202) at 120°C for 20 minutes so that the moisture content became 9% by mass, to obtain dry food granules for pets.
In the table, the ash content of the wheat flour was 1.13% by mass for wheat flour A, 2.56% by mass for wheat flour B, 1.56% by mass for wheat flour C, and 4.02% by mass for wheat flour D.
In the table, the unit of blend amount is parts by mass.
The results obtained are shown in Table 1.

Comparative Example 1 is a case in which high ash wheat flour was not used. Although the GABA content was greater than in general pet foods due to the large amount of wheat flour used, the results were not satisfactory.
In Comparative Example 2, the proportion of high ash wheat flour was 11 mass % in the wheat flour, but the results were not satisfactory even when the proportion of high ash wheat flour was small.
In Comparative Example 3, the proportion of wheat flour in the raw materials was 60 mass %, but the results were not satisfactory even when the proportion of wheat flour was smaller.
Comparative Example 4 was a case where the ash content of high-ash wheat flour was low, but the results were not satisfactory.
Comparative Example 5 was a case where the ash content of the high-ash wheat flour was high, but the results were not satisfactory.

Claims (1)

The method for producing pet food includes the steps of mixing and grinding wheat flour , the wheat flour content of which is 65% by mass or more among raw materials and the wheat flour content of which is 15% by mass or more and has an ash content of 2% by mass or more and 4% by mass or less, with other materials, adding water to the mixture, extruding the mixture using an extruder, and drying the mixture.