Digest v Hydrolysed animal protein

[Rachael]

Hi,

Digest is listed as Low grade and hydrolysed animal protein is listed as Medium quality but is Digest a hydrolysed protein? If Digest is a hydrolysed protein why have the two ingredient types been graded differently?  If Digest isn't a hydrolysed protein could you tell me what it is?

Thank you so much!

Rachael

[Red_Akita]

Hi Rachael,
Digest is actually obtained through the process of hydrolysis -the name itself is due to the process being similar to digestion, where a protein is broken down into simpler chains of amino-acids, ready to be delivered to the rest of the body. Hydrolysed proteins are basically the same thing.
There is quite a controversy on how healthy hydrolysed proteins are, but the real benefit is that they are very useful when you know a dog has a food allergy but you aren't sure to what ingredient. For obvious reasons, to take advantage of this, you need to have exclusively hydrolysed proteins in a food; if used in combination with other animal protein sources, you get only the disadvantage of unspecified, highly manipulated protein sources which add some flavour to the food, making it more palatable.
Back to your question, I have noticed that hydrolysed animal proteins are highlighted in red (low grade) in the ingredients lists of the foods containing them, but they are classified as medium grade once you go to the ingredients database of the website. I may hazard (but David is really the only person who can explain it) that originally they were rated as medium, then they have been downgraded. This resulted in a new scoring for every food containing them but the page dedicated to the detailed description of the ingredient hasn't been updated... happy to hear alternative explanations though!