According to the present results, DG proteins and muscle glycogen were the metabolites that better explain the separation of groups obtained in the canonical analysis. The relationship between both metabolites and growth was evident suggesting that the CrSq diet has nutritional components that facilitate the accumulation of proteins in DG and the gluconeogenesis pathway in muscle. Muscle growth involves two processes: (i) hyperplasia, the generation of new muscle fibres; and (ii) hypertrophy, the increase in size of those fibres already in existence (Semmens et al., 2011). In their study, Semmens et al. (2011) observed the hyperplasia process in an octopus species (Octopus pallidus) through the histological analysis of mantle muscle fibres. Poor and rich mitochondrial muscle fibres were observed even in octopus adults, demonstrating why octopus species maintain non-asymptotic growth during their life cycle.