Saturday, February 4, 2012

Reading Your Dog Food Label

By Lyn Jones


The ingredient list is a major key to what's really in that bag or can. Ingredients must be listed in descending order of weight (before processing). Sadly, the "before processing" piece of this rule, gives dog food manufacturers a loophole to make their products appear better quality than they really are. For example they may add a higher quality ingredient in a high moisture composition, and the low quality ingredients in dehydrated form. In this way, the high moisture ingredient will appear on the label before the more abundant dehydrated ingredients.

Meat: Dogs are carnivores, and do best on a meat-based diet. The protein used in pet food comes from a assortment of sources. When cattle, swine, chickens, lambs, or other animals are slaughtered, lean muscle tissue is trimmed away from the body for human consumption, along with the few organs that people like to eat, for example tongues and tripe. About 50% of each food animal does not get used in human foods. Whatever remains of the carcass â€" heads, feet, bones, blood, guts, lungs, spleens, livers, ligaments, fat trappings, and other parts not often consumed by humans â€" is utilized in pet food, animal feed, fertilizer, industrial lubricants, soap, rubber, and other products. These "other parts" are known as "by-products." By-products are employed in feed for poultry and livestock as well as in pet food. Avoid the word "by-product" of any sort irrespective of what its source is, named or not!

Meal: Meat meals, poultry meals, byproduct meals, and meat-and-bone meal are common ingredients in dry pet foods. The term "meal" means that these materials aren't used fresh, but have been rendered. While there are chicken, turkey, and chicken byproduct meals there is no equivalent term for mammal "meat by-product meal" â€" it is known as "meat-and-bone-meal." It may be referred to by species, such as "beef-and-bone-meal" or "pork-and-bone-meal." Avoid dog food with the words "meat" or "meat meal" listed without a specific animal identified.

Grains: The volume of grain and vegetable products used in pet food has risen seriously over time. Grain products now replace a substantial proportion of the meat that was employed in the earliest commercial pet foods. Most dry foods contain an enormous volume of cereal grain or starchy plants to provide texture. These high-carbohydrate plant products also provide a low cost source of "energy", what the remainder of us call "calories." Gluten meals are high-protein extracts from which the majority of the carbohydrate has been removed. They're regularly used to lift protein ratios without high cost animal-source ingredients. Corn gluten meal is the most often used for this purpose. Wheat gluten is also used to form shapes like cuts, bites, slices, shreds, flakes, and slices, and as a thickener for gravy. Mostly, foods containing grain proteins are among the poorer quality foods. Stay clear of dog foods that list disproportionate grains and fillers among the first few ingredients on the labels like ground corn, corn gluten, wheat gluten, soy bean, for example.

For more in-depth info there are a number of good dog food comparison sites on the internet. You should be able to easily find more about how they use animal fats and additives, recalls and other issues round the best food for your puppy .




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