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| dog food comparisons and compositions | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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— Shown in green are the meat ingredients, the "good stuff" dogs need. — Shown in yellow are the questionable ingredients (the "what is that vague wording supposed to mean?" / "it could and probably does mean anything" ingredients). — Shown in red are the substandard ingredients (including ingredients that are useless to dogs, ingredients that are difficult for dogs to digest, and/or ingredients that are likely poisonous to dogs; see the info explained below the chart). — Shown with a purple asterisk are the ingredients that can cause adverse reactions in some dogs, usually minor adverse reactions, such as dry, flaky, and itchy skin. (You will hear some people call these "food allergies". I tend to think that's stretching the definition a little. For instance, if you eat a strawberry and you develop hives and start wheezing an hour later, that is a food allergy. A little dry/flaky skin over the course of a few weeks after eating a lot of corn on a daily basis would just be, well, expected and normal, in my opinion.) — Everything else, whether good or neutral, is shown uncolored. — Each brand name of food listed has a link to its website, except Ol' Roy, which has no website. — I will add other foods as I find their ingredient information. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| detailed composition information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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— Ingredients in dog foods are listed by weight, with the "biggest"/weightiest ingredient at the top and going down from there. So, if the first ingredient is turkey meal, it means turkey is the main ingredient in the food. If flaxseed is the ingredient tenth on the list, then it means there isn't nearly as much flaxseed in the food as there is turkey (or whatever the first product listed is).
— If a meat ingredient is a plain meat (for instance, chicken), then that means that it is the meat including its water content. If a meat ingredient has "meal" after it (for instance, chicken meal), then that means it has been dehydrated. I mention this because if your food has chicken as the first ingredient and then lists low-quality ingredients (see below) for the next few items, chances are if all the water were drained from the chicken (i.e., if it were chicken meal), there is a good deal less chicken in there than you think there is, and your dog ends up eating mostly the low-quality ingredients. — Meat byproducts: Meat byproducts are the leftover materials from animal food sources that most people would consider unfit for human consumption: brains, bones, feathers/hair, horns/nails, skin, not-fully-digested excrement, etc. These byproducts are also not necessarily kept fresh before they are made use of in pet food. (I personally don't approve of my dogs eating half-rotten chicken poo, so I don't feed them a food that contains such a thing.) In particular, tallow, a hard, fatty material that is difficult to digest, is listed as an ingredient in some dog foods. Meat byproducts are found in: Alpo™, Diamond®, Eukanuba®, Iams®, Ol' Roy™, Pedigree®, Purina®, and Science Diet™. — Fillers: Corn, sorghum, and soy are fillers. Their sole purpose is to make dogs feel full, but they don't really supply them with the nutrients they need. (As I once heard it put, 'A dog in the wild is not going to raid a cornfield looking for food.') Corn and similar products dry out coats something horrible, which makes dogs scratch and become dandruffy. Plenty of dogs even have mild adverse reactions to these products (wheat too). Soy in particular is undigestible, and it can cause them to have bloat and gas. There is no good reason to have corn, soy, or sorghum products in a dog food. Corn and/or soy products are found in: Alpo™, Diamond®, Eukanuba®, Fromm®, Iams®, Kibbles 'n Bits™, Ol' Roy™, Pedigree®, Purina®, Royal Canin™, and Science Diet™. — Plant byproducts: Fillers known as food fragments are another type of difficult-to-digest byproduct that consist of non-animal leftovers from the manufacture of human foods/drinks. Brewer's rice, corn bran, corn flour, oat flour, and rice flour fall into this category. Because they are byproducts, they are cheaper to use than quality ingredients, but they are significantly lacking in nutrients. Food fragments are found in: Diamond®, Eukanuba®, Fromm®, Iams®, Purina®, Royal Canin™, and Science Diet™. — Plant glutens: Corn gluten, rice gluten, and wheat gluten are concentrated sources of protein that are cheaper to produce than, and not as digestable as, animal proteins. Other inferior sources of protein in dog foods include soybean meal, wheat flour, and whole wheat. Plant glutens are found in: Diamond®, Flint River Ranch®, Fromm®, Kibbles 'n Bits™, Ol' Roy™, Pedigree®, Purina®, Royal Canin™, and Science Diet™. — Synthetic preservatives: Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), ethoxyquin, propyl gallate, and TBHQ are non-natural preservatives included in some dog foods to make them last longer, but these particular preservatives are thought by many to be carcinogenic (cause cancer). Ethoxyquin in particular is used as a pesticide. Synthetic preservatives are found in: Alpo™, Kibbles 'n Bits™, Ol' Roy™, and Pedigree®. (Eukanuba® and Science Diet™ contained ethoxyquin until recently.) — Food coloring: Aritificial food coloring should be avoided. Dogs don't care what color(s) their food is, and it's just one more thing a dog doesn't need in its diet but would have to process and excrete. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| concerns you may have | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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— What if your dog has an "allergy" to an ingredient in its kibble? There are "hypoallergenic" diets you can feed if your dog is "allergic" to something in his normal dog food. A list of ingredients dogs typically have "allergies" to are: beef, beets, corn, milk, pork, potatoes, poultry, soy, wheat, vegetable oils made from corn/soy/wheat, yeast, and perhaps artificial preservatives and colorings. If you know your dog is "allergic" to any of those ingredients, simply find a high-quality kibble that doesn't contain them.
— Should you feed your dog salmon or a dog food containing salmon? You may have heard a scarewave about it on the internet. What you don't want to do is feed your dog raw fish, including salmon from the Pacific Northwest, because such fish can be infected with trematodes (otherwise known as flukes, flukeworms, or flatworms), Nanophyetus salmincola to be exact, which are poisonous to dogs if fed to them raw. Cooking kills this parasite, thereby rendering it harmless and fit for human/dog/cat/other consumption. — What if your vet recommends your dog eat Science Diet? Most vets who sell food products at their vet clinics sell Science Diet because it's convenient and that's the food they're probably most familiar with. Hill's, the company that makes Science Diet, typically gives free books, shirts, lunches, and internship (preceptorship) money to vets and vet students, as well as gives free food to vets for their own dogs and cats. Kind of a hard deal to pass up, really, since it does cost a bit to go through veterinary school. But also, most vets, like most people-doctors, have never had to take a course in nutrition. If vets have, it was most likely a singular course given to them for free and taught by the Hill's people. For obvious reasons, Hill's isn't going to tell them in their course that their product is what the majority of nutritionists I have read from would consider both substandard and overpriced; they're going to tell them that it's the best there is, and when you don't readily have another opinion available on the matter, that's what most people will tend to believe unless they do some independent research. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| what I get | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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— It contains an impressive five sources of protein: chicken, turkey, duck, salmon, and egg (whole eggs minus the shells). Protein is essential to dogs, as they are more carnivorous than herbivorous. — It does not contain fillers, meat byproducts, plant byproducts, plant glutens, synthetic preservatives, or artificial food colorings. — It's readily available to me, and it's not expensive. — Find a retailer near you. On Chicken Soup's retailer webpage, some places are out of date (some sell it that have not yet been listed, and some no longer sell it because of lack of demand for high-quality dog food in the area). If you call up a place near you on their list to see if they sell it and they do not, do what I did: Ask the place you called if they know of anybody nearby who might. I had to call half a dozen places on leads from other stores until I found a retailer nearby. (Turns out that retailer was in my home town, not 20 minutes away.) If you can't find a retailer near you immediately, really, it is worth the effort to keep trying 'til you do. — Buy it online and have it delivered to your door. — Contact the company and ask how else you can get a hold of their food. You can also take this basic approach with any of the other foods you've seen and liked listed above. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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