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No one dog food is
appropriate for all dogs but there are certain things about prepared dog
foods that you should understand so that you can make the best possible
choices for YOUR dog. Price is not necessarily an
indication of quality except that inexpensive dog foods cannot possibly have
quality ingredients in them.
Period. It cannot be done. Label claims cannot be trusted and
packaging is very often misleading.
For example, there is a new product by Purina – Beneful. Don’t you love the name? That combination between beneficial and
bountiful is quite misleading as are the things shown on the bag. It shows fresh ears of corn, unshelled peas
and green-topped carrots. What is IN
the food however is ground corn (a lower-cost source
of protein) and dried peas and carrots. Furthermore – those two items are 17th
and 18th on the package meaning one can only guess at the quantity
of those vegetables in any given bag of food.
That food also contains sugar, sorbitol
(another sweetener) and sorbic acid, a
preservative. Clearly Purina is
counting on people buying the food based on their very misleading packaging. Science Diet “Adult Canine
Maintenance” and Eukanuba “Adult Maintenance” are
here and they are expensive! Yet, a
review of the ingredients shows corn meal as the second ingredient on each of
those packages and corn meal is part of what is left after removal of part of
the oil. In other words – it is not
really corn but rather a product of corn.
Corn is cheap. Corn meal is
cheaper. Brewers
rice is in Eukanuba and in other dog foods as well
and that is nothing but a waste product of the alcohol industry! It is a “fragment” item and that is
undesirable. Most foods contain at
least one fragment because the manufacturers have to work to keep the food
affordable and that is one way to do it.
Beware however of products containing various fragments – not that it
is easy to figure out just what is and what is not a fragment without a guidebook! Other fragment items that you will
encounter include rice bran, corn gluten meal, and wheat flour all of which
are inferior to rice, corn and wheat in their unfragmented
form. Certainly avoid foods that have fragments in the top 5
ingredients. Another trap in the
labeling is that one can never determine what percentages there are of the
various ingredients and, to be sure, the companies almost never reveal that
information. While the ingredients are
listed in descending order of their weight before processing if there are two
or three grains in the top 5 ingredients there is surely more grain than the
meat listed first. In truly top
quality foods that will not be the case but the consumer simply doesn’t
know. Protein from plant sources is
much less expensive but not as healthy for your dog. And, about that health
issue – by skimping on nutrition sooner or later your dog will suffer health
problems and any savings you believed you made by buying poor quality food
will be more than balance by the vet bills.
There are many health issues that your vet will not specifically
relate to the food but are connected nevertheless. Nutrition and good health are irrevocably
connected. It is your choice how you
choose to spend your money but your dog is victim to what you put in his bowl
when you do not understand those labels and how to buy the best. N |