Specification · citable · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
The BARC Protocol — scientific framework
BARC — Biologically Appropriate, Residually Corrected — is a two-axis specification for feeding cats and dogs. It holds that biological appropriateness and nutritional adequacy are independent properties, that a fresh diet must satisfy both, and that the second is achieved by a measured correction rather than by ingredient selection.
This page is the formal statement of the framework. The plain-language version is here.
1 · Biological-appropriateness boundaries
Independently of adequacy, the fresh base must satisfy three quantitative constraints. These bound the base; the correction supplies micronutrients, not macronutrient structure.
| Constraint | Dog | Cat |
|---|---|---|
| Animal-derived energy (% of kcal) | ≥ 85% | ≥ 95% |
| Protein-to-fat ratio (by energy) | 0.8 – 1.6 | 0.8 – 1.6 |
| Dietary fibre (% of dry matter) | ≤ 5% | ≤ 2.5% |
As delivered: the reference bowls measure 90.2% animal-derived energy for the dog and 100% for the cat — both clear of the floors above.
2 · Allometric energy model
Cat: MER = 90 × BW0.67 × M (kcal/day)
Food sized to: targetKcal = MER × 1.10
The dog exponent 0.64 follows the measured intake regression of Burger & Johnson (1991) rather than the theoretical 0.75 Kleiber exponent, because real-world canine MER scales sub-allometrically. The cat exponent 0.67 is the NRC 2006 feline standard, anchored to surface-area-to-mass scaling.
The coefficient cannot be read without its multiplier band. M is not centred on 1 for both species, and the two conventions are not interchangeable — the cat coefficient 90 embeds the modern-household baseline (neutered, indoor, ambient, normal body condition) directly into the allometry rather than applying it downstream.
| Species | Coefficient | M band | M at anchor | Anchor MER |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dog | 98 | 1.2 – 1.8 | 1.5 | 1,000 kcal @ 20 kg |
| Cat | 90 | 0.9 – 1.3 | 1.1 | 251 kcal @ 4 kg |
The model converges independently with published frameworks: at M=1.5 the 20 kg dog lands within 1% of the Purina household-active band, and at M=1.10 the 4 kg cat lands within 1% of the NRC active-intact figure. Full triangulation against NRC 2006, Purina and AAHA/WSAVA — including the activity, body-condition, season and neuter multipliers in real units — is documented in the framework record.
2b · External validation — independent convergence
The coefficients above were derived empirically across our development lineage, calibrated against Indian household animals, without reference to the frameworks below. The triangulation was performed afterwards. It is therefore a test of convergence, not a fit — the model was not tuned to these targets.
Rows marked served lie inside the band the engine actually delivers (dog M 1.2–1.8; cat M 0.9–1.3, hard floor 0.90). Rows marked mapped show where published clinical protocols fall on the same scale — the engine clamps before reaching them and does not serve those states. Sub-maintenance and veterinary weight-reduction feeding are outside the scope of a daily-plan tool.
Dog · 20 kg · RER = 662 kcal/day
| Reference frame | Published | Growlrr | Agreement |
|---|---|---|---|
| NRC 2006 active intact · 130 × BW0.75 | 1,230 | above served ceiling | — |
| Purina household band · 95–110 × BW0.75 | 899 – 1,040 | M 1.5 → 1,000 served | mid-band |
| Purina neutered-active · ≈100 × BW0.75 | 946 | M 1.3 → 867 served | −8% |
| Kealy 2002 lean cohort · 80 × BW0.75 | 757 | M 1.13 → 753 · mapped | −0.5% |
| AAHA/WSAVA weight-loss start · 1.0 × RER | 662 | M 1.0 → 667 · mapped | +0.7% |
| AAHA refractory floor · 0.8 × RER | 530 | M 0.8 → 533 · mapped | +0.7% |
Purina’s household guidance is a band, not a point. We quote the band and place our value inside it, rather than selecting the one multiplier that maximises apparent agreement. The sub-allometric exponent 0.64 is supported by Bermingham (2014) and Sallander (2010).
Cat · 4 kg · RER = 198 kcal/day
| Reference frame | Published | Growlrr | Agreement |
|---|---|---|---|
| NRC 2006 lean-active · 100 × BW0.67 | 253 | M 1.10 → 251 served | −1.0% |
| Purina household · 1.13 × RER | 224 | M 1.00 → 228 served | +1.8% |
| NRC overweight · 130 × BW0.40 | 226 | M 0.95 → 216 served | −4.4% |
| Purina overweight · ≈1.0 × RER | 198 | M 0.90 → 205 served · hard floor | +3.6% |
| Aggressive feline weight loss | not offered | hard clamp M ≥ 0.90 | policy match |
The 0.90 floor is deliberate and matches Purina’s decision to omit a weight-loss mode for cats: rapid fat mobilisation in the cat carries a documented hepatic-lipidosis risk. The feline exponent 0.67 matches NRC 2006 exactly, where Purina substitutes 0.75 for clinical convenience. Post-neuter metabolic slowdown is documented by Larsen (2017); the lean-longevity cohort by Kealy (2002).
3 · Ancestral anchor, urban reality
The boundaries are anchored on ancestral prey composition. The free-ranging wolf derives close to 99% of dietary energy from animal sources (Bosch et al., 2015), at roughly 52% of energy from protein and 47% from fat — a protein-to-fat ratio near 1.1. The BARC floors sit deliberately belowthat ceiling, and the dog’s below the cat’s, to admit a realistic mixed bowl. The asymmetry is biology: the cat is an obligate carnivore with hard dependencies on pre-formed taurine, arachidonic acid and vitamin A; the dog is facultative, with real but bounded starch capacity.
Appropriate is not the same as preferred. Offered free choice, domestic dogs do not self-select the ancestral ratio — they converge fat-forward, near 30% of energy from protein against 63% from fat. A framework built on what animals choose would be an obesity framework. BARC is built on what they are built for.
Then the urban correction. BARC anchors the nutrient target on the ancestral profile, but sizes energy to the animal actually in the room, through M — a retriever on a thirty-minute walk is not a wolf. The ancestral bowl decides what the nutrients are; M decides how muchto serve, which for most urban pets is considerably less. Conflating those two is how “ancestral” diets make animals fat.
4 · How adequacy is demonstrated
A day passes only if every NRC 2006 floor is cleared — a joint criterion, not an average. Three methods: a paired-arm ablation (the same simulation run twice, differing only in whether the correction is applied, which isolates it as the causal variable); a stochastic reliability framework resampling real ingredient variability, cooking retention and mineral bioavailability, reported as a Wilson lower bound; and a hepatic buffering model testing chronic accumulation against safe upper limits on the time axis.
| Arm | Reliability | Floors missed |
|---|---|---|
| Fresh base + correction | zero failures in 106 draws | 0 of 28 |
| The same base, uncorrected | 0% | 11 dog · 14 cat |
| Mono-protein, uncorrected | 0% | 14 dog · 16 cat |
A structural zero, not a near-miss. Six nutrients arrive at a literal 0% of requirement from a cooked boneless base — calcium, thiamine, vitamin E, choline, manganese and long-chain omega-3 — so the joint criterion cannot be met in any draw, at any sample size. And the balanced base still misses 11–14 floors at once. Ingredient quality narrows the gap; it does not close it. (Once failures reach zero a Wilson bound reduces to n/(n+z²) — a function of draw count, not of the diet — so we report zero failures at a stated N rather than trailing decimals.)
5 · Open framework — an invitation
BARC is published as a framework, not a moat. The two-axis standard, the boundaries, the energy model and the validation methodology are released under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 — free to cite, teach, critique and build on with attribution.
We would rather be argued with than ignored. If you are a formulator, a veterinary nutritionist, a researcher or a developer working on fresh feeding — especially if you think a boundary here is set wrong — we want to hear from you. Adopt the framework. Publish against it. Tell us where the numbers fail.
Particularly welcome: independent replication of the ablation on your own recipes, regional adaptations where local ingredients change the residual, and challenges to the boundaries with data.
Write to me directly — not a support queue:
Prasanna Muralidharan · Founder, Growlrr Foods
What is withheld, and why.The correction’s bill of materials and the balancing engine are proprietary and not licensed. Everything needed to reproduce the procedure is above; the correction is represented abstractly as a mass that closes the measured gap. The framework is the contribution — the formulation is the business.
How to cite
Muralidharan, P. (2026). The BARC Protocol — Biologically Appropriate, Residually Corrected: scientific framework and specification. Growlrr Foods Pvt Ltd.
The full methodology record is deposited separately. DOI to be added on deposit. Provenance: biological appropriateness derives from BARF (Billinghurst, 1993); correcting a home diet to a published standard derives from BalanceIT (Delaney, DACVN). The contribution here is the two-axis standard, its quantitative boundaries, and the validation methodology.
References
- National Research Council. Nutrient Requirements of Dogs and Cats. National Academies Press, 2006.
- Burger IH, Johnson JV. Dogs large and small: the allometry of energy requirements within a single species. J Nutr 1991;121(11 Suppl):S18–21.
- Pion PD, Kittleson MD, Rogers QR, Morris JG. Myocardial failure in cats associated with low plasma taurine. Science 1987;237:764–8.
- Stockman J, Fascetti AJ, Kass PH, Larsen JA. Evaluation of recipes of home-prepared maintenance diets for dogs. JAVMA 2013;242:1500–5.
- Wilson EB. Probable inference, the law of succession, and statistical inference. JASA 1927;22:209–12.
- FEDIAF. Nutritional Guidelines for Complete and Complementary Pet Food for Cats and Dogs. 2024.
- Billinghurst I. Give Your Dog a Bone. 1993.
Plain-language version: What is the BARC Protocol? · How we validated it · Full bibliography