Food Mix
Obviously, you want to give your pet the best possible food. If your pet is healthy and young the default pet foods may work for you. As your pet ages, or if your pet isn't quite average this quickly becomes impossible. The Pet Food and Health app can create bespoke food mixes for each of your pet. It does so by analysing your pet's food requirements, maximising the protein intake for your pet (but not exceeding the optimal value), and minimising the cost for you.
Food Mix
The app can make a bespoke food mix for each of your pets. To make a food mix, the app requires at least two foods. Otherwise, there's not much to mix after all 😅. More advice on the best types of food to add is given further down this page.Creating a Mix
To create a food mix, tap on Mix Food in the main screen. You'll be greeted by the food mix screen, and asked to select a pet – a food mix is always tailored to one pet. Creating a food mix can be as simple as just this one tap. Or you can tweak and tune to get the food blend that is just perfect for you.
Your Pet's Needs
The app first shows your pet's needs. These are the calories your pet needs per day, as well as the required and optimal amount of proteins your pet should eat daily. If you currently have a default food set up for your pet the app also analyses this food and, specifically, the amount of proteins provided by this food.
The information shown here is just for your reference. You don't need to do anything. The app is just showing the values it is working with to create that perfect food mix.
Foods, Treats, Costs
In the next section you can select foods you want the app to consider for a food mix, the treats you want to give on a daily basis, and a maximum price you want to consider.
Foods
By default, the app considers all the foods you have added when creating a food mix
. If you want to exclude certain foods (e.g. because they are no longer available) you can deselect them here. Selecting a food here does not mean that the app will use it. Instead, you are only indicating which foods the app can mix together to find that optimal food mix.
Often you will find that the current food you are feeding does not meet the optimal protein requirements. To make a better food mix the app needs access to a high-protein food too. These are often sold for either dieting pets or very active pets. Or you can simply browse your local pet store for high protein foods. And remember, you can add the information of a food to the app before you buy it. Let the app – and the food mix tool – do the hard work and figure out which foods mixed together give you that optimal blend.
Chicken/Salmon
Chicken and salmon (or some other protein-rich fish) are great options to supplement the food of your pet. They are easy to buy, and can often (but not always!) provide a cheaper food supplement than more expensive protein-rich pet foods. The app fully supports human foods, so they are easy to add too.Treats
Treats are a special category. We all want to spoil our pets a little bit! If you give your pet a daily treat – whether it is a chewing bone, a nibble, a slice or bread, or a favourite slice of meat – you can add these too
. When calculating the food mix the app takes the nutritional profile of these treats into account too and adjust the main foods accordingly. You heard that right: we can pamper our pets in a healthy way! If you don't give a daily treat though, you can skip this section.
Costs
Foods with a high protein count can be expensive. While the app tries to get your food mix to that optimal protein value, this may simply not be what you can afford or want to spend. you can set the cost to the desired value
and the app will still create the best possible blend for you, with the highest achievable protein values.
Save Money
While most pets don't get enough protein from their foods, there are pets who get too much proteins. Exceeding the optimal proteins won't hurt your pet, but they can hurt your wallet as those extra proteins can cost a lot. In these cases, food mixes create blends that typically reduce your cost by tuning it down to the optimal protein values.Your New Blend
Whenever you make a change the app instantly recalculates the best food mix for you. For simplicity, you can choose whether the app creates an accurate or simplified food mix
. The difference is in the proportions of the ingredients. For an accurate food mix you'll need a scale. A simple food mix uses easy quantities, which can more readily be mixed.
And that's that! Your new food mix is ready!
Below your food mix you can see a detailed analysis of the blend created by the app. If you set up the costs for all items used in the food mix you also see a daily and monthly cost
. If pricing is available for the current food the app lists those too as a reference.
When you're happy with a food you can go ahead and save it. If you wish, you can also set it as the new default food for this pet
.
Not quite happy? Simply scroll up and change the foods, treats, and costs. The app instantly creates new food mixes for you.