PawsMenu combines dog meal planning with food tracking

Turkish animal nutrition specialist Dr Ercan Mevliyaoğulları has developed PawsMenu, an application that helps dog owners calculate food portions and monitor daily food intake. The app combines homemade meal planning with commercial pet food tracking. According to the developer, it is available in six languages and is currently free to use, with no subscriptions or in-app purchases.

PawsMenu calculates energy and protein requirements based on a dog's age, body weight, sex, activity level and physiological condition. According to the developer, the calculations use nutritional references from the National Research Council (NRC), while ingredient values are sourced from the USDA FoodData Central database.

Users can create homemade meals and record commercial pet food in the same feeding diary, monitoring quantities consumed and calculating daily energy and protein intake.

According to the developer, the application's product catalogue includes selected US-market products from Acana, Royal Canin, Purina Pro Plan and Hill's Science Diet. Users can also manually enter nutritional information from product labels.

Mevliyaoğulları is seeking opportunities to expand the database with more pet food products available on European markets. He is particularly interested in working with manufacturers to ensure accurate product information and help consumers understand how purchased foods contribute to their dogs' daily nutritional intake.

According to the developer, PawsMenu supports English, Turkish, Dutch, German, French and Italian and can be accessed in 175 countries via Apple devices and its website.

According to biographical information supplied by the developer, Mevliyaoğulları holds a PhD in Animal Nutrition and Nutritional Diseases from Kırıkkale University and founded Mevli Pet Food in 2015. His research interests include pet food formulation, extrusion technologies and alternative ingredients.

The developer emphasises that PawsMenu's calculated menus are not automatically nutritionally complete and balanced and should not be used as a dog's sole daily diet without further evaluation.