To examine diets in relation to the behavioral preferences of captive bears, we plotted the mean proportion of protein (17%) as an isoportion line (“intake target” sensu Simpson & Raubenheimer, 2012) within EMTs. The preferred optimal ratio of macronutrients is likely to vary between bears (Erlenbach et al., 2014) and perhaps populations (Shafer et al., 2014); thus, we also plotted the associated ±4% SD isoportion lines around the mean protein intake to represent variance. We note as caveats that the preferred mean protein intake of captive bears was determined using conventional statistics which might differ from the compositional mean. Likewise, as mentioned previously, conventional SD estimates are not consistent with a compositional data analysis paradigm. Nonetheless, given the difficulty in determining macronutrient intake targets and related functional outcomes of free‐ranging animals (Machovsky‐Capuska, Coogan, Simpson, & Raubenheimer, 2016), adopting the optimal diet reference point of captive bears serves as a useful heuristic.