Q&A: What is the best dog food brand for my Toy Poodle?

Try Innova or Canidae. They are excellent foods with no fillers or byproducts. My beagle mix is doing wonderfully on Innova. We switched him from Iams, there’s a huge difference.

http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com

   Food is the fuel of all life. The quality of the fuel directly relates to how well the body can operate. Low quality dog food, such as Beneful, Pedigree, Ol’ Roy, Purina, Eukanuba, Iams, Science Diet, etc., are filled with *empty* calories. These foods are made with keeping costs down in mind, *not* in the best interest of nutrition. When you think of healthy food, do you think of Nestle of Mars (both heavily invested in producing candy)? What about Del Monte (heavily invested in produce, especially corn…)?

   Heck, just go to Beneful’s or Pedigree’s websites, they’re full of promotions, coupons, streaming audio and video, and heart-warming catchy slogans; they know that as long as they paint a pretty picture, the “sheeple” of the world will think it must be good because they got a warm and fuzzy feeling by the advertising.

Let’s take Pup-peroni (by Del Monte), for example, a quick scan of the ingredients raises eyebrows:

   – Meat By-products – Definition: The non-rendered, clean parts, other
     than meat, derived from slaughtered mammals. It includes, but is not
     limited to, lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, livers, blood, bone,
     partially defatted low temperature fatty tissue, and stomachs and
     intestines freed of their contents
   – Sugar – Because all dogs need sugar, right?
   – Propylene Glycol – Here’s a few uses of this chemical (from Wikipedia):
      + As the main ingredient in deodorant sticks
      + As a medical and sexual lubricant
      + As the killing and preserving agent in pitfall traps, usually used
        to capture ground beetles
      + As a solvent used in mixing photographic chemicals, such as film
        developers
      + In hand sanitizers, antibacterial lotions, and saline solutions

How about Pedigree (made by M&M’s company Mars), you know ‘Really good food for dogs’:

   – First ingredient – GROUND WHOLE CORN (read, nutritionally void filler)
   – Corn Gluten Meal – This is a well-known (even patented) herbicidal agent
     used for weed control in lawns and gardens!
   – Wheat Mill Run – Definition: Commonly referred to as “floor sweepings”,
     this ingredient is nothing more than inexpensive filler with little or
     no nutritional value.
   – Chicken by-product meal: Consists of the ground, rendered, clean parts
     of the carcass of slaughtered chicken, such as necks, feet, undeveloped
     eggs and intestines, exclusive of feathers, except in such amounts as
     might occur unavoidable in good processing practice. Chicken by-product
     costs less than chicken muscle meat and lacks the digestibility of
     chicken muscle meat.

Chemical additives aside, let’s analyze the recommended serving size between Pedigree and a quality food like Orijen. Being that Pedigree is mostly fillers, your poor dog has to eat so much more just to get the calories to survive when compared to a quality food that actually contains real meat. You ready?

    Pedigree (50-75lb. dog): 4 to 5-1/3 cups a day
    Orijen (45-75lb. dog): 1-3/4 to 2-1/2 cups a day!

   Orijen costs more, but you feed less, AND the quality is superb. Just look at the difference in the ingredients and it’s painfully obvious which is a quality food.

Pedigree: GROUND WHOLE CORN, MEAT AND BONE MEAL, GROUND WHEAT, CORN GLUTEN MEAL, ANIMAL FAT (PRESERVED WITH BHA/BHT), WHEAT MILL RUN, WHEAT FLOUR, NATURAL FLAVOR, SALT, POTASSIUM CHLORIDE, CARAMEL COLOR, CHICKEN BY-PRODUCT MEAL, RICE, VEGETABLE OIL (SOURCE OF LINOLEIC ACID), VITAMINS (CHOLINE CHLORIDE, dl-ALPHA TOCOPHEROL ACETATE [SOURCE OF VITAMIN E], L-ASCORBYL-2-POLYPHOSPHATE [SOURCE OF VITAMIN C*], VITAMIN A SUPPLEMENT, THIAMINE MONONITRATE [VITAMIN B1], BIOTIN, d-CALCIUM PANTOTHENATE, RIBOFLAVIN SUPPLEMENT [VITAMIN B2], VITAMIN D3 SUPPLEMENT, VITAMIN B12 SUPPLEMENT), MINERALS (ZINC SULFATE, ZINC PROTEINATE, COPPER SULFATE, COPPER PROTEINATE, MANGANESE PROTEINATE, POTASSIUM IODIDE), ADDED FD&C AND LAKE COLORS (YELLOW 6, YELLOW 5, BLUE 2, RED 40)

Orijen: Deboned chicken, chicken meal, turkey meal, russet potato, lake whitefish, chicken fat, sweet potato, whole eggs, turkey, salmon meal, salmon and anchovy oils, salmon, natural chicken flavour, sunflower oil, sun-cured alfalfa, dried brown kelp, carrots, spinach, peas, tomatoes, apples, psyllium, dulse, glucosamine Hcl, cranberries, black currants, rosemary extract, chondroitin sulfate, sea salt.

You can apply this same analogy TO EVERY SINGLE PET FOOD IN THE GROCERY / CHAIN PET STORES!

NEWS FLASH: Science Diet is crap food too! Yes, your vet makes *MONEY* by selling it, not to mention a SIGNIFICANT number of veterinary school programs ARE FUNDED by Hill’s!
There is nothing scientific about their “diet”. The science they use is how to make a profit.

Quality foods: Innova, California Natural, EVO, Karma-www.naturapet.com, Wellness, Wellness Core, Orijen-www.orijen.ca, Canidae, Merricks, Artemis, Taste of the Wild, Nature’s Variety, Solid Gold-Barking at the Moon, Go!, Now! Canidae- http://www.canidae.com, Eagle Pack Holistic Chicken (avoid regular Eagle Pack)and Timberwolf.

Bottom line, read ingredients. They say a lot!