How to identify the healthiest dry dog foods on the market.
By Nancy Kerns
Last month, in “A Super (But Secret) Industry,†I discussed the difficulty of getting into a factory where wet pet food is made – a task I have not yet managed to accomplish. Happily, I have been able to tour a few facilities that manufacture dog treats and dry food. This hasn’t resulted in any huge surprises to me, but sure helped me understand the many challenges facing manufacturers who want to produce the very best dog food possible.
Choosing a food for your dog can be daunting. Don’t stress! Just read the labels, choose one, and see how your dog responds. If his response is poor, try another. There are many top-quality foods available today.
As we have described in our annual food reviews since 1998, this task starts with top-quality ingredients. To mix a metaphor, you really can’t make a silk purse out of sows’ ears, chicken heads, bovine tumors, restaurant grease, rendered fat from animals that died on farms, and cheap grain by-products left over from the human food manufacturing industry. Many people say, “Oh, for goodness’ sakes, they are just dogs! Why can’t they eat guts and stuff?†Well, they can, of course, and most dogs do! The vast majority of pet food produced in this country is made with what we would consider to be poor-quality ingredients.
For optimal health, every credible human nutrition expert in the world advocates eating a balanced varied diet of a varying menu of fresh, top-quality foods. There is no biological reason to expect dogs (or any other animal) to be any different. Pet bird experts now realize that an all-seed diet is unbalanced and inadequate for avian health; birds also need access to fresh plant material (fruits, vegetables, green foods such as sprouts, etc.) to thrive. People who keep rabbits as pets now know that alfalfa pellets alone don’t sustain rabbits as well as a diet that includes a variety of fresh hay, root vegetables, and green, leafy vegetables.
Dogs are just the same. A balanced, home-prepared diet of a variety of fresh, healthy ingredients is optimum; a commercial diet made with the same ingredients is leagues better than a commercial diet made with cheap fats discarded from restaurants, inexpensive carbohydrates produced as waste from the brewing industry, and plant proteins such as corn gluten meal (animal proteins have a much more complete amino acid profile than plant proteins).
Of course, the best ingredients cost a lot, and a reliable supply may be difficult to find. Pet food makers who are committed to producing foods for the top end of the market have to continually hunt for ingredients that meet their standards – and be prepared to reject shipments that fail to pass their inspection.
We strongly believe that ingredient quality is the key to a dog food’s quality, as well as the criterion that is easiest for the average consumer to judge, based on a simple review of the ingredients listed on the label. See “WDJ’s Dry Dog Food Selection Criteria,†page 4, for a detailed description of what is desirable and what is best avoided when scrutinizing the ingredients’ panel on your favorite dog foods.