The dog food business is murky to say the least. Think you can trust the big brands that you know well and have a ‘good reputation’? Many of them make deceptive marketing claims and have unclear ingredients lists to try and fool customers. Even some of the brands that most vets recommend are trying to pull the wool over your eyes, and they get away with it because they allow the vets a high margin on retailing their products in their surgeries, and dog owners tend to trust their vet when it comes to nutrition.
The only way you can be sure what is actually in your dog’s food is to study the ingredients list sceptically, and assume the worst. We’ll help you to read between the lines and navigate your way around the smoke and mirrors…
What are we looking for?
High quality dog food includes a high proportion of fresh meat or fish, vegetables, complex carbohydrates, a healthy fatty acid source, vitamins, minerals, and absolutely nothing else!
What is the first listed ingredient?
The ingredients list on the back of the bag (not the title or flavour of the product!) tells you what goes into the food. Dog food companies are not required to provide as much detail as human food producers, so you will not find percentages next to each ingredient. However, they must be listed in order, so there is more of the first ingredient in the recipe than there is of the second and so on. That is why the first listed ingredient matters!
Higher quality dog foods will have meat or fish as the first ingredient, and they will specifically name it… for example, “Chicken 55%”. Lower quality foods may have rice or some other grain listed as the first ingredient, and that should be a warning sign. The flavour might be named “Chicken and Rice” in big letters on the front of the bag, but rice could be listed as the first and primary ingredient, with chicken following somewhere further down the list.
Splitting out the grains
Some clever marketers are happy to mislead customers to boost their profit margins and find ways of getting around the requirement to list the ingredients in order. Let’s say a dog food company wants to come up with the next product that is going to take the market by storm and boost their profit margins. Rice is a cheap bulking agent, so they want to use rice as the main ingredient. The marketing team suggests that if rice is listed as the first ingredient, it will not sell very well, because customers are getting smart and now look beyond the product name and scrutinise the ingredients list. So, they come up with a plan to use rice and maize together, rather than rice alone. This will allow them to list chicken as the first ingredient. Instead of “Rice, Chicken…” (where rice is 40% and chicken is 21%), they can state “Chicken, Rice, Maize” (where chicken is 21%, rice is 20% and maize is 20%), even though the total grain (rice + maize) is 40%, and the chicken is just 21%... don’t be fooled!
Not all meat is made equally
If “chicken” is listed as an ingredient on the back of the bag, you are picturing fresh chicken being added to the mixing bowl, right? Not necessarily… be careful of any adjectives used around the meat. Unless the label expressly states that the meat is fresh, or freshly prepared, you can safely assume that it is not. Many dog food producers only use meat meal, which is essentially meat dried into a powder form. The most common one you’ll see on dog food packaging is “poultry meal”. And if you are assuming that the poultry is just chicken, or is always the same ratio of chicken, turkey, duck and geese, then you are probably wrong. Using a loose term such as poultry allows the manufacturer to use whatever poultry they happen to have available at a low cost. So, from batch to batch of food, you have the same ingredients list, but different ingredients used. This could be the cause of your dog’s digestive issues.
And it gets worse…
Some dog food producers use very broad terms like “meat derivatives” or “animal derivatives” on the label. This all-encompassing term could, theoretically, mean any part of any animal… it could be some lovely chicken breast, but if so, why not shout about it? In a competitive market like this, marketers make the best use of every claim they can, so it is safe to assume that “meat or animal derivatives” is code for something that you don’t want your dog to eat. Chickens have feathers and beaks, sheep have wool, cows have hooves… not quite the nutritious meat that you want to be feeding your best friend. And it is not just discount or own brands that use this stuff, it is big brands too… the ones you often see advertised on TV!
So, what should you look for?
We recommend avoiding anything non-specific. Look for the protein source to be named, for example, “chicken”, as opposed to “poultry” or “animal derivatives”. Then look for an adjective describing that protein, for example, “fresh” or “meal”. Meat meals are not all bad, in fact – they are particularly digestible and protein dense, but overall, they are not as good as fresh meat. A blend of both can be beneficial, but you want fresh meat to lead the ingredients list.
Artificial preservatives, colours or flavours
Artificial ingredients are used by some big commercial pet food enterprises to preserve, colour and flavour dog food products. Some of these additives have been linked to cancer and of course, provide no nutritional benefit… it is all about shelf life or appearance. You should try and avoid anything artificial, as there are plenty of natural alternatives. The flavour should come from a good, high meat content, dogs do not care what colour their food is, and there are plenty natural preservative options, at Paw, we use rosemary extract to preserve our superfood.
Good supplements
In addition to the meat or fish, vegetables and complex carbohydrates, high quality dog foods contain beneficial, natural supplements like fatty fish oil for omega 3, prebiotics like Mannan oligosaccarides (MOS) and Fructooligosaccharides (FOS), vitamins A, D3 and E, Zinc, Iron, Copper and more. These are often known as nutritional additives, because they are nutritionally beneficial and make your dog’s diet complete.
Summary
When selecting a high-quality food brand for your dog, look for transparency on the label. At Paw, we are proud of the superfood we make for dogs and have nothing to hide, so you will find a full list of ingredients, analytical constituents, and nutritional additives on our product pages, and on the labels on our bags. You will find that meat or fish is the top ingredient, you’ll find some vegetables and complex carbohydrates in the middle, and some supplements and nutritional additives at the bottom. That’s it. You can scrutinise our recipes for yourself here!
