How to choose your dog food?

Dogs are opportunistic carnivores, unlike the omnivores people used to believe. This means they need a good amount of meat in their diet in order to be their healthiest.

PICKING OUT A MEATY KIBBLE
The first step in picking out a wholesome kibble is to make sure there is plenty of meat in the food. For example, if chicken is listed as the first ingredient and there is no other meat listed, there isn’t enough meat in the food. The ingredients on all bags of dog food are listed by weight. Once the chicken is cooked and all that water is taken out, the chicken weighs a whole lot less. So in reality, there is much less chicken meat in the food than there is of the other first 5 (or so) ingredients.

If chicken meal is listed as the first ingredient there is a probably good amount of meat in the food. Chicken meal is regular ole chicken meat that’s already been cooked and its water has been taken out. Since it’s already been cooked the weight of the chicken meal won’t change during the kibble making process.

Ideally you want a food that has both a whole meat and a meat meal. Although a meat meal (like chicken meal, salmon meal, etc) is a good thing to find on your ingredient list, that stuff is overly cooked. A regular meat source (like chicken, salmon, etc) would have a more vitamins and minerals, but a meal provides a whole lot of meat based protein. That’s why it’s good to have both.

Take a moment to look at the guaranteed analysis of the dog food. The guaranteed analysis will help you get a better idea of the amount of meat (protein) in the food. If you find a kibble that has a few meats and meat meals in the first few ingredients and around 35% protein, you’ve probably found a good food.

Right now, there is no safe upper limit established for the percentage of protein in dog food. This means that tests so far show that no damage has been caused by dogs eating high protein (unless pre-existing damage or failure exists).

MEAT BY-PRODUCTS
The organization in charge of dog food, the AAFCO, thinks it is okay for your dog to eat by-products. Specified meat by-products are the dry, ground, rendered, parts of slaughtered animals. Depending on the animal these by-products include heads, necks, feet, intestines, bones, undeveloped eggs, connective tissues, and other stuff left over from human processing. So if the kibble doesn’t list a meat (like chicken or beef) or a meat meal (like salmon meal or lamb meal) and only has meat by-products, you aren’t giving your dog much meat. By-products are hard to digest and most likely have been treated with a number of potentially harmful chemicals before they arrive at the kibble making facility.

UNSPECIFICED MEAT PRODUCTS
If your bag of food has ingredients like poultry meal, fish meal, meat meal, liver meal, meat and bone meal, there is no telling what kind of animals are in that food. It’s important to mention these ingredients are guaranteed to have been treated with some kind of chemical agent for preservation purposes.


CARBOHYDRATES
There are many different sources of carbohydrates used in kibble. You want a food that uses WHOLE forms of carbohydrates. Whole forms of carbs have more nutritional value than fragments. The main reason dog food makers use fragments is to beef up the protein levels in the food. There isn’t enough protein in the food because there isn’t any meat.

For example:
White Rice is whole, Brewers Rice is a fragment.
Potato is whole, Potato Product is a fragment.
Oatmeal is whole, Oat Hulls are fragments.

If there is multiple carbohydrate sources in the food keep in mind that all those different carbs add up. If there are only one or two meat sources listed and five carbohydrate sources, there is a possibility that there are more carbs than meat in the food.

FILLERS
Fillers have no real nutritional value except as a source of fiber. Fiber is a good thing, but you can get fiber from other sources like the white rice and oatmeal. Avoid ingredients like Corn Bran, Oat Hulls, and Cellulose. There are other fillers that aren’t so bad. Some of the better fillers are Tomato Pomace, Apple Pomace, and Citrus Pulp.

FAT
Fat is probably the second most important ingredient besides meat. Good healthy fats are essential to your dog’s health. Well, there can be unspecified fat sources in the food too. If your ingredient list says poultry/animal fat, it’s an unspecified fat source. If it says pork/chicken fat then it’s good. Knowing what species your dog is eating is important.

Some companies use oils as their fat source. That’s fine. I prefer oils made from animals (like Salmon Oil). If your dog doesn’t have a problem with plants oils (like allergies and such) then you’re probably all right. Just make sure it doesn’t say Vegetable Oil because that’s unspecified and could have some scary stuff in there.

Tallow and Lard are two very bad forms of fat. These fats are nutritionally shallow. They aren’t a good source of linoleic acid which is important to a dog’s health, and are just there because they smell and taste appealing to canines.

You also want to look out for anything called digest. Digest is where dog food companies take whatever meat hunks they can find, throw it into a huge tub, and add caustic chemicals to it to break it down. Then they take that soupy mess and add/spray it into the kibble. It has zero nutritional value. Sugar, Sorbitol, Cane Molasses, Fructose, and Corn Syrup are all sweeteners. Sweeteners can lead to obesity, Diabetes, and tooth decay.

CHEMICALS
Dog food is chalk full of chemicals and can build up in their bodies overtime and cause sickness.

You want to avoid artificial colors and dyes like Blue 2, Red 40, Yellow 5, and stuff like that. Dogs don’t care what color their food is. Dog food manufactures put that stuff in there to appeal to us. Such dyes are known to cause tumors and other health problems.

BHA and BHT have been banned by a lot of countries because it’s a known human cancer causing agent.

Ethoxyquin is a stabilizer for rubber! It’s been banned for human consumption! It’s been known to cause all kinds of health problems! Since the kibble manufacturers don’t add it to their formulas it doesn’t have to be listed on the ingredient panel. It’s most often found in fish. If your kibble has fish in it, contact the company. If they beat around the bush and say their suppliers’ stabilizers/preservatives are proprietary information…they use ethoxyquin.

Propyl Gallate (aka Gallic Acid or Propyl Ester) is suspected to cause liver disease and cancer. It is used as a preservative. Vitamin E, Vitamin C, and Rosemary do just as good of a job as those chemicals! They are more expensive but they are much safer than that other stuff.

There’s one more thing you should avoid. It’s located near the end of the ingredient list on a bag of food. It goes by the names Menadione Sodium Bisulfate Complex, Menadione Sodium Bisulfite and Vitamin K3. Menadione is the key word. It’s synthetic vitamin K. It’s been linked to a whole bunch of health problems. There are other whole food and natural ways to get vitamin K in kibble. Manufactures use K3 because it’s cheap.

SO WHAT TO FEED?
Well, there are lots of good foods out there. Since every dog is different it’s hard for me to say one food is better than another. What one dog does terribly on another dog could do wonderfully on. If you’re looking for a truly awesome and healthy food you’re not going to find it at your local grocery store or supermarket.

A few of you who are reading this are saying to yourself, “I had a dog live 18 years eating food like that and he was just fine.” A man named Buster Martin has been a beer drinker and smoker nearly his entire life. He’s 101 years old and he just competed in the London Marathon. If you had a dog live for 18 years eating mostly corn that dog is a genetic marvel just like Buster Martin. Most of us aren’t as lucky as Mr. Martin, and most of our dogs won’t be that lucky either. Dogs have very short life spans and providing them with the nutrition they need is an important way to keep them healthy for as long as possible.

TREATS AND CHEWS
Treats and chews shouldn’t make up more than 10% of a dog’s diet. Any more than that and you run the risk of throwing off your dog’s vitamin and mineral ratios causing nutritional deficiencies. There are some really great and really terrible treats out there. Now that you’ve learned how to pick a good dog food, you should be able to find good nutritious snacks without ugly chemicals and by-products.

The best chews are made from animals. Ears, hooves, bullysticks, lungs, gullets, antlers, trachea, tendons, and other products like this make wonderful chews. They are fully digestible and will help keep your pet’s teeth clean just as well as commercial chews.

FOODS TO LOOK FOR
These are all good dog foods. Check them out and see which ones look the best to you. There are other great foods out there but these are all pretty popular and should be easily avaliable in your nearest PLC.

Canidae
Natural Balance
Eagle Pack Holistic Select
Timberwolf
Natura Products
Wellness
Nature’s Variety
Orijen
Solid Gold
Taste of the Wild
Ziwi Peak

Also, this is a good website where you can check out the rating of dog foods. It is an independent site so you do not have to worry about propaganda.
http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/