Take Care Of Your Pets' Intestinal Health, Oligosaccharides Can Help

As we all know, the intestines are not only the main place for dogs and cats to digest and absorb nutrients, but also the largest immune organ. They are an important line of defense for dogs and cats against the invasion of harmful substances such as pathogens and toxins in the intestinal lumen. Intestinal health is directly related to the health of dogs and cats. A poor intestinal tract not only affects digestive function, but also reduces immunity, allowing bacteria to take advantage of the situation. Therefore, it is very important to take good care of the intestinal health of dogs and cats.

How to take care of the intestinal health of dogs and cats? In addition to providing a good living environment, providing dogs and cats with a reasonable and nutritionally balanced diet and developing good feeding habits, they can also be conditioned by supplementing some functional ingredients. There are currently some probiotic products on the market that can be used to regulate the balance of intestinal flora in dogs and cats and inhibit harmful bacteria. However, probiotics are not convenient to add during dry food processing due to the processing conditions of dry food (long high temperature process). In order to add functional ingredients that protect intestinal health in a long-term and stable manner, more and more pet food factories choose to add probiotics. Oligosaccharides meet the daily gastrointestinal health care needs of dogs and cats.

Speaking of oligosaccharides, they are linear or branched carbohydrate compounds composed of 2 to 10 monosaccharide molecules. Oligosaccharides serve as bifidobacteria growth promotion factors and have good bifidobacteria growth promotion function and is widely used in food and feed production. The most common oligosaccharides currently on the market are: mannooligosaccharides, fructooligosaccharides, galactooligosaccharides, isomaltooligosaccharides, xylooligosaccharides, soybean oligosaccharides, chitosan oligosaccharides, etc. The two most mature ones used in pet food are mannan oligosaccharide (MOS) and fructooligosaccharide (FOS), because they are supported by a large amount of application research data and mature use cases.

MOS derived from the surface layer of yeast, is a naturally occurring oligosaccharide. The main chain of MOS is bound by α-1,6 glycosidic bonds, and the branch chains are bound by α-1,2 or α-1,3 glycosidic bonds. In addition, the content of α-1,4 glycosidic bonds in MOS is very small, and mannanase and amylase can only digest α-1,4 glycosidic bonds, so MOS will not be digested by various enzymes in the feed. Therefore, MOS is not an anti-nutritional factor and will not be destroyed by mannanase and amylase, but a prebiotic that can be utilized by probiotics.

The structure of MOS is similar to the binding receptor structure of pathogenic bacteria on the intestinal wall, so it can competitively bind to pathogenic bacteria, hinder the adhesion of pathogenic bacteria on the intestinal wall, and thereby adsorb and excrete pathogenic bacteria from the body. Its mechanism of action is as follows:

In addition, MOS can also be used as a prebiotic to promote the proliferation of beneficial bacteria and exert the normal functions of beneficial bacteria such as barrier, nutrition, and immunity. It can promote the proliferation of beneficial intestinal bacteria and reduce the number of harmful bacteria. In the environment of pursuing the health, MOS, as a mature oligosaccharide product, can play a positive role in protecting the intestinal health of dogs and cats by virtue of its pure natural product attributes, and is suitable for long-term addition in various pet foods.