Dog Food Ingredients

The American pet food industry brings in $16.1 billion each year selling a variety of food products, but which one is best?  If you spend any time searching the Internet for nutritional information about dog food, you will soon find that there is a huge controversy between those who feed commercial dog foods and those who feed homemade, all-natural or raw food diets.

Those who feed commercially produced foods often spar over the premium brands and the lower-priced grocery store brands.  One of the primary points of contention has to do with the ingredient labels.

Being a Smart Label Reader

Have you ever taken the time to really read the label on your dog’s food?  It can be confusing, if you haven’t had a little coaching first.  For example, one of the things we always hear is that a high quality dog food will have protein as the first two or three ingredients listed.  Most people know that manufacturers are required to list the ingredients in order of weight, such that an ingredient that makes up 25% of the food’s weight will be listed before an ingredient that makes up 10% of the weight.

However, what is not commonly known is that a manufacturer can move an ingredient down on the list by breaking it up into several different components.  For example, a food that is made of 75% carbohydrates could still list meat as the top ingredient if the carbs are broken down into corn meal, corn, rice, grain, wheat, rye, barley, etc.  Each of these individual ingredients may make up only 5% of the food’s total weight, while lamb makes up 10% of the weight, but it is perfectly acceptable for the manufacturer to list lamb first if the carbs are all listed separately.

According to the Food and Drug Administration’s regulations governing pet food labels, another important consideration is that the weight of each ingredient is determined at the time it is added to the food, not after the food is dried.  So, for instance, meat (which typically contains about 75% water) might weigh much more when it is fresh and much less when the food is dried out to make kibble.  Grains, on the other hand, may already be fairly dry and will not lose much weight in the food manufacturing process.  Therefore, in the final product, you may get much more grain as compared to meat, even though the label seems to indicate the opposite.

Guaranteed Analysis

In most states, dog food manufacturers are required to list the minimum percentage of protein and fat, as well as the maximum percentage of fiber and moisture contained in their foods.  The moisture content is very important when evaluating these percentages to compare different foods, as the guaranteed amounts are said to be “as fed” or “as is”.  For example, dry food that has 10% water will have 90% of the other ingredients, let’s say 30% each of protein, fat, and fiber.  In a 1 pound serving, your dog would get about 0.1 pounds of water and 0.3 pounds of the other three.  On the other hand, canned food might have 70% water, leaving only 30% to be made up of the other ingredients.  If you feed your dog 1 pound of canned food, the dog will get 0.75 pounds of water and 0.1 pounds of protein, fat, and fiber.

The best way to compare is to figure out the dry weight of the ingredients before you compare the various types.  To do this, subtract the moisture amount from 100 to get the total amount of dry matter in the food.  For example, a food with a guaranteed moisture content of 10% would have a dry matter content of 100 – 10 = 90.  Next, take the guaranteed amount of a particular nutrient, divide it by the dry matter content, and multiply by 100 to get the percentage of the dry total attributable to each nutrient.

An example might help here.

• Brand A is a dry dog food that has a guaranteed analysis of 9% moisture and 25% protein.
• Brand B is a moist dog food that has a guaranteed analysis of 77% moisture and 8% protein.

At first glance, you might think that Brand A has a much higher protein content.  However, since you now know that the moisture content means something, you can find out which one has more, which as it turns out is Brand B.

• For Brand A:  100 – 9 = 91% dry matter.  25 / 91 x 100 = 27.48% protein
• For Brand B:  100 – 77 = 23% dry matter.  8 / 23  x 100 =   34.79% protein

Are there any good carbohydrates and fats?

In short, yes.  Your dog requires fats to have healthy skin and fur, and carbohydrates to provide the sense of fullness after meals that can help prevent obesity.  However, not all fats are created equal; neither are all carbohydrates.

Fats are normally not a problem, as the meat in dog food will generally contain some animal fats, which should be enough to meet most of your dog’s nutritional needs.  However, if you wish to supplement, consider fish oils because they contain the omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids that are important for cardiac health.  You might add a capful of cod liver oil to your dog’s food each day or you might purchase a supplemental vitamin product that contains fish oils.

For carbohydrates, most of the concern is that many cheaper dog foods contain too many carbohydrates that cannot be digested easily by your dog.  Digested carbohydrates are turned to sugar, which the dog’s cells use to perform their designated tasks.   Most carbohydrates are added to dog food solely to provide bulk.  While this is important because it helps your dog feel full, it does nothing to provide fuel for the dog’s body.  Food that cannot be digested are simply excreted as waste and cannot be used as fuel for growth and energy.

Dogs can digest nearly all the nutrients in white rice and some of those in corn, but very few of those in oats, flour, wheat, and peanut hulls.  Potatoes are also a valuable source of carbohydrates, whether they are white, gold, or sweet.

What are rendered ingredients?

As quoted in the January, 2010 Tufts University Veterinary School publication “Your Dog”, veterinarian Sally Perea points out that meats used in dog food are often dried to make “meat meal”.  This drying process is required to make the food easier to form into dry pieces of kibble.  It doesn’t mean that foods that contain meat meal are any less nutritious or less safe to feed than those foods that contain fresh meat.

The Association of American Feed Control Officials defines meat as the “clean flesh of slaughtered mammals and is limited to…the striate muscle…with or without the accompanying and overlying fat and the portions of the skin, sinew, nerve and blood vessels which normally accompany the flesh.”

On the other hand, “meat meal” is “the rendered product from mammal tissues, exclusive of any added blood, hair, horn, hide trimmings, manure, stomach and rumen contents.”

This means that meal may include portions of the animal you might not generally consider to be edible, such as bone fragments and organ meats like brain, kidney, and lungs.  However, it turns out that some of these ingredients at which we would turn up our noses are actually good for dogs!  The bones can provide calcium, while the organ meats are a source of many vitamins and minerals important to your dog’s health.

The pet food industry is simply an extension of the human food industry, whereby the parts of animals that humans don’t want to consume are rendered into dog food.  In fact, many of the commercially available dog foods on the market are made by companies whose ownership leads back to human food manufacturers.  Purina, maker of Alpo, Mighty Dog, Dog Chow, Beneful, and others, is owned by Nestle.  Heinz, which makes Gravy Train, Kibbles’n’Bits, and Milk Bone, is owned by Del Monte.  And Royal Canin, which manufactures Pedigree, is owned by Mars, Inc., a division of MasterFoods.

Additives

Just as with any processed food, dog food contains certain ingredients meant to preserve the food, preventing it from rotting.  In the past, chemicals such as BHA, BHT, and ethoxyquin were used, but these have since been linked to various canine diseases like cancer.  Companies are now switching to more natural preservatives such as vitamins C and E.  This change has reduced the shelf life of most dry dog food from 12 months to 6 months.

Other chemicals are added to prevent the water and fat from separating.  Antioxidants prevent the fats from becoming rancid, and artificial colors make sure the food looks appetizing and acceptable to us.  Remember, your dog probably doesn’t care what his or her food looks like, but manufacturers know that you are the one who is spending the money, not your dog.

Niche Marketing Claims

Did you ever wonder how much of the hype surrounding certain brands or formulations is marketing and how much is true?  According to Born Free USA,  an animal advocacy organization, niche claims are one of the biggest myths currently gripping the pet food world.

Dog foods are classified against two standards:  food appropriate for adult dogs, and food appropriate for growing puppies, including pregnant mothers.  All other claims, such as that a particular food is helpful in preventing or treating certain diseases or in creating a perfect dog of a particular breed, is simply marketing magic.

Natural and organic foods

The definition of “natural” from the American Association of Feed Control Officials leaves room for the addition of many ingredients we might not think were natural or healthful.  The definition of “organic” from the USDA is somewhat better as it very clearly specifies how ingredients must be grown and prepared.

Keep in mind that there is nothing to stop a company from using the name “Natural” or “Organic” in the company name, as long as they don’t claim that their ingredients are prepared according to the legal definitions.

Similarly, pet food manufacturers may claim to use “human grade” ingredients, which would lead you to believe there are no by-products in their foods.  However, there is no legal standard defining this term, so it is meaningless.

If a marketing campaign alludes to high quality ingredients such as fruits, vegetables, or herbs, be sure to check the ingredient statement to find out how much of these ingredients are actually included.  They can claim to include these special, healthy-sounding items even if they only have a very small amount of them in the bag.  In addition, make sure the food contains the whole item of whatever is being touted.  It’s possible they are only including the scraps left over after the human food is processed.  You may have to do some digging or even call the manufacturer to find out this information.

Rating Sites

If you search the Internet for dog food ratings, many of the sites you will visit will be a passionate plea for you to feed your dog raw food or homemade dog food.  They will be filled with claims that commercial dog food is filled with disease-ridden meat, by-products, and other ingredients that can harm your pet.  While these claims may have some basis in fact, keep in mind that just because something sounds gross to you doesn’t mean it will harm your dog.

Yes, it is true that commercially-produced dog foods often contain rendered ingredients that don’t sound terribly appetizing, but your dog really doesn’t care.  (Remember, this is the same pooch that rolls in dead animals whenever possible.)  In addition, these web sites often don’t point out that your dog’s digestive system isn’t bothered by the bacteria that make humans sick, like e.coli.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will tell you that I am in favor of the BARF diet, but I personally don’t have the time to prepare food for my dogs every day.  So, I use commercial dog food.  And the biggest difference I have seen between the premium dog foods and the grocery store brands is the level of protein included in the mix.  Cheaper brands tend to contain more grains, which means that your dog must eat more food to get the protein his or her body needs, thus creating more yard waste.

If you want to see ratings of the various brands of dog foods, you will want to visit reputable research sites like DogFoodAnalysis.com,  PetFoodRatings.net, and DogFoodChat.com.

Keep in mind that pet food manufacturers often change the formulations used to create their foods.  Be sure to check the publication date of any reviews to make sure they are reasonably current, and check the ingredient listing of the review to make sure it mirrors the one on the product you are considering purchasing.