Quick Guide to Dog Food Ingredients

When it comes to selecting food that meets our dog’s unique needs we can be bombarded with options! We are faced with so many choices and despite the best of intentions, a lot of the time it can be truly difficult to figure out what is actually in our dog’s food. Additionally, dog food ingredients can be very misleading (or even confusing!).

Years ago when I was still a trainer at a big box store, I did one whole class on canine nutrition. Now, I’m not a nutritionist by any means, but I’ve done my homework to learn as much as I could about it.

An alarming number of dog food brands have products that lack essential nutrients or contain ingredients that are harmful. In fact, many have been linked to recalls, class action lawsuits, and serious health consequences. That is why the research team at Reviews.com decided to dedicate 1,400 hours of detailed research to determine which formulas were safe, and which to keep our paws off. I have personally gone through this list and I have to admit it’s pretty thorough.

They’ve even created a quick infographic guide to dog food ingredients:

MAKING SENSE OF LABELS

It should be noted that ingredients on dog food is commonly listed by weight, not volume. This becomes important when you consider the following scenario:

• Dog food brand X advertises “Chicken is the #1 ingredient!
• When you look at the label, “Chicken” is indeed the first ingredient.
• However, if it’s just chicken, and not chicken meal, it’s probably been packed with a lot of water initially.
• Then you notice that ingredient #2 is corn meal, which is nutritionally useless to a dog and if a common filler.
• THAT MEANS, there’s probably more corn meal than chicken in that dog food.

Also, a “meal” isn’t necessarily bad. Meal is just an ingredient that’s been dehydrated and pulverized, essentially. “Chicken meal,” “Lamb meal,” and “Salmon meal,” are all good ingredients. As the infographic above points out, when it just says “meat meal,” we have no idea what meat it is. It could be anything…and probably is!

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

Any kind of byproduct is no good. A byproduct is just the leftovers nobody wanted for the really good stuff: beaks, feet, hair, feathers, unused organs, etc. It’s really nasty stuff, but it’s cheap so some manufacturers will use it. Some will actually turn this into a meal, and this is the absolute WORST. This is scraping the bottom of the barrel and still only giving you the worst of that.

Corn (not “corn meal”) is not processed. It just adds weight. Some brands will advertise that they’ve got the “scientifically researched, fact-based” truth about corn, and simultaneously slam their competitors (who oddly enough have moved away from corn). Interestingly, those companies never say what exactly their findings are or show any data. Hmmm….

“Sorghum” is a type of feeder grass/grain. It’s a typical filler and adds very little to the nutritional value of the food.

Beware of colored foods. You think a dog cares what color their food is? Dog food is colored for humans, which means manufacturers are using unnatural dyes.

Dogs are carnivores and do best on a meat-based diet. However, an all-meat diet is nutritionally unbalanced and will result in deficiencies, so a good food will also have some other healthy bits in it to round it out.

EAGER TO LEARN MORE ABOUT DOG FOOD?

For more information regarding their dog food findings take a look at Reviews.com’s complete dog food guide here!

As I said, I’ve personally reviewed this site and I think it’s a good resource. Give it a look and let us know in the comments if it was helpful to you!

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