Vitamin E for Dogs
Specifically Your Treats
"Can I use vitamin E for dogs treats?" We get this question a lot. As we talk to our customers, often what we find are dog treat bakers trying to eliminate mold, or prevent mold growth on their dog treats. There is some misinformation out there that Vitamin E or mixed tocophorols are good natural preservatives for preventing mold. We want to set the record straight.
Adding Vitamin E to your dog treats will only add cost to your product, and not really give you an tangible benefits! Vitamin E is a fat soluble antioxidant and is often added to treats by commercial pet snack makers to prevent rancidity of any meats or fats that have been added (Vitamin E / mixed tocophorols are added as a preservate to animal by-products or animal fats). Vitamin E does not control mold or impact mold growth at all. Most mold inhibitors that are use are chemicals and not all natural (ie calcium proprionate). The all natural way to control mold is to control moisture content.
So - the best preservative for a gourmet baker like yourself is honestly getting the moisture out of your products (if you are making crunchy treats). Moisture contents of 8% to 12% result in shelf lives of many many many months (6 months easily).
If you are baking soft treats - then you will be lucky to achieve a good shelf life of 3 weeks - but that would require higher levels of sugars and possibly mold inhibitors - but those are typcially only available at commercial volumes.
Unfortunately - adding vitamin E to your dog treats isn't the magic bullet to solving your shelf life issues. Read some more on the best natural preservative for your dog treats -
dehydrating them.
Also - to learn a little more about mold and controlling mold growth, follow this link to our page
to learn why vitamin E for dogs treats won't help your dog treat mold problem.
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