Creamino®

Creatine - a lost nutrient in modern animal nutrition

Body-own creatine is a key energy reserve in tissues of vertebrates. Although mostly being found in muscle cells (>95%) various other tissues such as brain, heart as well as immune cells and sperm have a strong demand for creatine. Known for its role in human nutrition creatine prevents low levels of cellular energy by supporting to avoid ATP depletion through immediate provision of high energy phosphates to regenerate the ATP molecule from ADP.

Keeping in mind the Greek word ‘kreas’ (for meat), it’s an easy guess where dietary creatine may come from. Vertebrates are evolutionary designed to receive creatine from the diet. In human nutrition, creatine supplementation is recommended in the case of a vegetarian diet or for particular nutritional needs. The situation in animal nutrition, however, is much more complex. The animal’s creatine demand cannot be fulfilled from dietary creatine/ from feed.

Only very small amounts of creatine are provided by diets containing animal by-products given the instability of creatine during rendering. Due to legislation issues in various countries, hygiene drawbacks as well as high costs of raw materials of animal origin (e.g. fish meal) modern animal nutrition moves towards a plant-based raw material approach and is deliberately sacrificing dietary creatine. Although creatine is also formed by de-novo synthesis involving the amino acids arginine and glycine while producing its precursor guanidinoacetic acid (GAA), a part of the animal’s creatine pool is irreversibly lost and excreted as the ‘waste’ substance creatinine through urine. How do we now ensure a steady refilling of the creatine pool for our animals instead of giving up and letting this important nutrient vanish?

Alzchem is known as the key supplier for high quality creatine for humans and developed Creamino® consisting of GAA, as a source of creatine for animals. GAA is the immediate precursor of creatine in the body with no other metabolic fate. In contrast to creatine it has been proven to be heat-stable even up to 130 °C during extrusion and is the only authorized source of creatine for animal feed.

Creamino® is Alzchem´s creatine solution for feed application. Free flowing, made in Germany, dedicated for the animal feed industry.