Introduction
What dog food is the best? Ask a veterinarian and you'll get one answer; ask a pet nutrition expert and you'll get another. Ask your neighbor and you might get a long-winded speech delivered with as much passion as a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman.
Getting a useful answer does require looking beyond the slick dog food commercials and acquiring a little knowledge of what to look for in a good dog food brand.
With this goal in mind, I wanted to give you some practical information on what you should be looking for when trying to determine the best dog food.
Partial Ingredient List of Two Typical Brands
I will begin by listing the first two lines of ingredients of two typical pet food brands. We will refer back to these lists throughout the article:
Brand 1
Whole grain corn, poultry by-product meal, animal fat preserved with mixed-tocopherols (form of Vitamin E), corn gluten meal, meat and bone meal, brewers rice, soybean meal, barley, whole grain wheat, animal digest...
Brand 2
Deboned Salmon, Menhaden Fish Meal (natural source of Omega 3 Fatty Acids), Chicken Meal, Potato Starch, Peas, Chicken Fat, Potatoes...Blueberries, Cranberries...
Would you care to guess at this point which dog food is rated higher?
Principles for choosing what dog food is best
Rule #1 - Look for a named animal as the first ingredient (chicken, fish, duck, lamb, etc.).
Comparing the above two labels we see that one has whole grain corn as the first ingredient while the other has two named animals (salmon, menhaden) as the first ingredients.
Rule #2 - Look for named animal sources of meat (i.e. a specific animal species) and not generic animal sources.
You can see that the first brand has quite a few generic animal ingredients (poultry, animal, meat, etc.) These are highly processed meat sources from the discards of slaughterhouses, which are not fit for human consumption. The second brand lists specific animal sources (salmon, chicken, etc.)
Rule #3 - Avoid chicken / poultry by-products.
Again, comparing the above labels, we see the first brand contains poultry by-products. Not only is it not a named meat source (Rule #2), but "by-product" means it is the ground, rendered remains of slaughtered poultry including necks, intestines, feet, beaks, etc.)
Rule #4 - Avoid artificial colors, flavors or preservatives
The rendering process for commercial dog food makes it nearly unpalatable to dogs. Thus, colors and flavors are added to improve the tastes. Preservatives are added to increase the food's shelf life.
The first brand above contains the following artificial colors (Red 40, Yellow 5, Blue 2, Yellow 6). The second brand contains no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives.
Rule # 5 - Avoid corn, wheat or soy
These products make cheap fillers for many commercial pet foods. In some cases, they replace the animal protein sources, which are more expensive. These foods are very difficult to digest, are the causes of many allergies in pets and are incomplete sources of protein.
As you can see, Brand 1 has several of these ingredients (whole grain corn, corn gluten meal, etc.) The second brand avoids these ingredients and includes whole vegetables and fruits.
No article of mine would be complete without sharing my belief that a diet of homemade recipes is the best for your dog's health. Fresh, homemade recipes fulfill all of the above criteria, are fun to prepare, and give you maximum results for your pet.
I urge you to become more informed about this way of feeding your pet. However, if I am unconvincing continue to read up on dog food ingredients and dog food ratings. Finally, use the above principles to determine the best dog food on the market.
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