Need help with Balance IT Nutritional Analysis

Hi Lisaslzy,

Okay, I know what the problem is.

First, the Balance It formulator uses a different standard to calculate nutrient requirements. The standard they use is AAFCO, which is a commercial standard based off of NRC.

PDD uses NRC, as that is the gold standard.

AAFCO sets standards for commercial pet food and the components of these foods are often not of human food quality. So, the AAFCO takes the NRC standard and incorporated a "fudge" factor into the recommended amounts of some nutrients that takes bioavailability and other factors into account, to better reflect the decreased nutrient availability of ingredients commonly used in pet foods.

The NRC standard was designed for more purified feeds where the nutrient availability is higher than ingredients used in pet foods. So whole food ingredients used by humans are better suited to the NRC standard.

AAFCO also doesn't include important fatty acids and fatty acid ratios in their standard.

AAFCO also uses modified Atwater factors to calculate the available energy of foods, whereas PDD (NRC) uses standard Atwater factors.

Further, AAFCO formulates diets for 2 life stages (maintenance and growth). So diets are not individualized.

PDD formulates diets precisely for each individual pet using the NRC standard, so PDD is far more accurate and the numbers will differ. Dogs have 5 life stages and cats have 4 life stages, according to NRC.

Balance your diet according to PDD.

Here is what to look for:

1) Nutrient Summary and Ratios are all in the green
2) The Remaining Calorie Targets (on the ribbon) should be as close to zero as possible, and
3) Make sure your nutrients do not exceed safe upper limits (see blog links below)

Rene