The harsh truth about dog food!
Do you know what's in your dog's food? What exactly are bad ingredients in dog food?
You want to give your dog the best food, but it's not easy to understand exactly what's in it. Find out which dog food ingredients you should avoid when choosing dog food, so you can feed your pet the highest quality food they deserve.
You can't just trust brands or the name of the food, because pet food companies can use tricks to make their food look better than it actually is. Packaging and advertisements can be misleading, but the ingredient list offers a truer insight into what's actually in your dog's food.
Check the dog food ingredient label to ensure it doesn't contain any of these common but potentially harmful dog food ingredients. You might even want to check your own food, as some of these ingredients can also be found in human food. Instead, choose one of the recommended healthy alternatives.
Meat and meat meal
Meat is healthy for your pet. Meat makes up most of your dog's daily diet. However, if you see "meat meal" or "meat and bone meal" in the ingredients instead of "meat", you know your pet is getting the worst source of meat it can get from dry food!
If dry food manufacturers include the words "suitable for all" and incomprehensible ingredient names, you can only guess what they contain. These harmful ingredients for dogs are always leftovers, and the only
guarantee is that no quality standard is guaranteed!
Ingredients can come from sick, dead animals, from expired meat sections of grocery stores (complete with plastic packaging), or even contain tumors from animals.
Once this Frankenstein concoction is prepared, it is thoroughly heated to eliminate any potential pathogens (which it certainly does). This process also destroys most of the nutrients that might have been in these questionable ingredients.
The result is a hard-to-digest, nutrient-poor food that "increases" the protein percentage on your dog food packaging but provides very little usable protein to your pet.
Healthy alternative to look for in ingredients: meat and meat meals
Look for real meat you recognize, such as whole deboned chicken, turkey, lamb, beef, or salmon, or meals made from these meats. These ingredients are likely less processed and contain more natural nutrients and usable protein.
Animal by-products
Another undefined source of protein. Animal by-products are all animal remnants after all the meat and bones have been removed (these may be used in the aforementioned meat and bone meal).
What does that actually mean? Animal by-products are not bad. Legislation dictates that they must not contain feathers, claws, hair, skin, beaks, and other inedible animal parts. Organ meat is an animal by-product and is a healthy pet food ingredient.
The problem with animal by-products, and why they are on this list, is that they are nutritionally inconsistent. Unnamed animal by-products can be so heavily processed
that the pet is left with little to no nutrients.
Furthermore, by-products are often sourced cheaply, so you never know if the by-product used in your pet's diet actually provides valuable nutrition. If you want to use healthy animal by-products, look for food that uses named animal parts, such as heart, liver, or kidney, instead of unnamed and questionable animal by-products.
Healthy alternative: choose meat
Again – why choose anything else when your dog and cat mostly need real meat? Fresh meat – nutrient-rich and minimally processed.
Meat digest
Meat digest is another undefined source of meat, obtained by chemical or enzymatic hydrolysis from animal tissues not subjected to decomposition. Essentially, it's a mixed "meat" broth that has been thoroughly processed. It is used as a flavoring, sprayed onto dog food to mask unpleasant tastes and compensate for the lack of actual meat flavor.
According to the FDA, "Regarding flavors, pet foods often contain 'digest,' which are materials processed at high temperatures, with enzymes and/or acids to form concentrated natural flavors. To make chicken-flavored cat food, only a small amount of 'chicken digest' is needed, even though no chicken is actually added to the food."
Healthy alternative: choose better quality
The inclusion of animal digest or any kind of digest indicates that the food contains insufficient meat protein. After all, if the food has plenty of healthy, nutritious, and protein-rich meat, why would there be a need to add meat flavor?
How to recognize good dog food?
Super-premium, minimally processed foods contain, for example, free-range chicken, organic vegetables, and fresh fruits supplemented with antioxidants.
Quality foods do not contain cheap, questionable ingredients that many manufacturers use to make large profits or make the food impossibly cheap.
Unfortunately, large, popular brands call their foods premium foods, but look at their composition!
We, Zorro.lv, have placed ONLY the highest quality foods on our website that help pets resolve health problems and stay in shape every day!
Price is not always an indicator of quality, but the ingredient list does not lie – if you know how to read it. The first step is to check that these ingredients are not in your dog's food. There are so many good, healthy foods you can include in your dog's diet. Treat your dog to the highest quality food!