Do you ever get confused looking at a pet food/supplement label and wonder if it is a quality product?
Let’s start with pet food. Cats and dogs are carnivores. They have no biological need for a high carbohydrate-based food. In fact, meat should have top billing followed by fruits and vegetables. Based on how the label is written out, it can be hard to determine the top ingredients. Ingredients are listed in order of their weight, so the heaviest ingredients are listed first. So, you would think it would be clear determining the top billing if ingredients were listed in that order. Not so fast. Some labels will mention the same type of ingredients multiple times and when you add up the weight, they are heavier than your top billed ingredient. We call this practice “splitting”. See example:
· Beef, beef meal, brown rice, white rice, rice bran, barley, gluten meal
OK. This can get tricky. Beef is listed first (however it is not removed of water content (about 80%), so it is less weight than the beef meal. Beef meal is beef minus water content. Looks good but now let’s look at the carbohydrate and grain content. You will see “rice” mentioned 3 times. These are all rice ingredients that when added together will likely have a higher weight content than the meat.
Look for meat, meat meal, organ meat in the first 7 ingredients. Organ meat is important as it is a 100% bioavailable source of taurine. Limit the use of synthetic vitamins/ingredients. Whole food, organ meat and fruits and vegetables have a higher digestibility and are bioavailable to your pet.