This is the same amount of carbohydrate as in 5 & ¼ teaspoons of table sugar. An apple has around 22 grams of carbohydrate (NFE) in it. Let’s use the example of a medium-sized apple. The NFE also doesn’t provide any information on how the body will handle the carbohydrate, or what type it is. So, while a pet food manufacturer will tell you the NFE when you ask for “carbohydrates”, this number may overestimate the actual amount, especially in diets that are high in soluble fiber. ![]() ![]() NFE includes not only digestible carbohydrate, but also soluble fiber (which is missed in the crude fiber test), vitamins, and any errors or variation in the tests for the other nutrients. The technical term for whatever is left after subtracting out all these other nutrient types is “nitrogen free extract” or “NFE”. The standard way to determine the amount of carbohydrate in a pet food is to measure the moisture, crude fiber, protein, fat, and ash (mineral) and then to assume that whatever is left is carbohydrate. In very rare cases, you might see maximums for starch and dietary sugars, two types of carbohydrates, but we’re going to focus on the average pet food, which will not have this information. You may have noticed that while protein, fat, fiber, and moisture are always provided on the label of a pet food as part of the Guaranteed Analysis, carbohydrate is not listed. That leads us to what is probably the most frustrating aspect of carbohydrate in pet food – trying to figure out how much is actually in a specific food! But there may be some situations where this information could be useful. ![]() For the majority of pets, the actual amount of carbohydrate in the diet doesn’t matter. In part 1 of this topic, we defined the term carbohydrate and discussed whether pets need carbohydrates and reasons why carbohydrates are included in pet foods.
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