Commercial dry dog food is often marketed as having a rich palette of flavors: however, much of it looks fairly similar: brown squares. Oftentimes, the marketing campaigns or the bags themselves will boast a variety of flavors that would even make the mouths of dog owners water. The answer of what is really in the dog food is far from straightforward however — the process that their dog’s food goes through and what parts and quantities of those delicious animals actually make it to their pet’s bowl isn’t always obvious.
Ingredients on a bag of dry food are listed in descending order by amount; a bag promising mixture of corn, chicken and lamb contains relatively more corn than a bag that advertises lamb, chicken and corn. Furthermore, undesirable ingredients are often split up into their constituent parts so as to have less prominence: if the ingredient list reads, “chicken, corn meal, corn starch, corn flour, corn”, there’s a very good chance that there’s a lot more corn than chicken.
Because ingredient lists are so long, there are many that don’t impact the food in any meaningful way. These are usually the ones that come after the first pure fat ingredient (animal fat, fish oil, vegetable oil). Whether wet or dry, a lot of dog food contains ingredients people wouldn’t serve up at Christmas: horsemeat, bonemeal and grain by-products might all be mixed up into your dog’s food. Protein gels and grain gluten might be used in wet foods to create meaty-looking chunks.
Clearly, dogs are capable of surviving on a lot of diets. However, if you are concerned about your dog’s diet, you might want to take a closer look at the ingredients of the food you feed him. It might not be everything the front of the bag promises. Quality over quantity is the big rule for dog food.
Always research before just taking any dog food from the aisle.
