Dog Food Labelling: A Minefield Of Misinformation

We  have had several people request help due to ongoing issues and  inconsistencies with their hound’s toileting…and dreadful wind!  The  problem is what they are being fed.  However, with so much conflicting  information out there, you need to be able to see past the smoke and  mirrors and understand what exactly you are putting in your dogs bowl.

So,  to help, we’re going to teach you how to translate dog food labelling!   While we are going to try to make this as easy to understand as  possible, you best hold on tight because it’s going to be a long one.

How  many of you can confidently say that you’re feeding your dog a balanced  and nutritionally complete diet?  Pretty confident?  Is that because  the front of the food bag tells you so?

Well…think again!  

Dog  food producers try their best to entice you into buying their products  with bright packaging and bold claims, but if you read between the  lines, it is more than likely that they’re pulling your leg.

For  the most part, commercial dog food isn’t designed with your pet’s  health at heart, it’s simply designed to keep your dog alive with the  cheapest ingredients possible!  In order to get around people finding  out this unfortunate fact, they dress their products up in fancy  packaging, ambiguous language, buzz words and worse still… ‘breed  specific’ foods!

Choosing the  right food for your hound can be a tricky business.  With countless  options available and bold claims such as ‘veterinary recommended’ on  the front to draw you in, most people don’t look past the front of the  packaging even though the labelling on the back tells a different story.

Some  brands claim ‘no fillers’ on the front of their packaging, but then you  look at the ingredients and it is made up entirely of fillers.  Others  claim ‘made with natural ingredients’ but that means nothing unless they  state the ingredients are 100% natural, the claims are just buzz words  to get your attention.

Sadly  their claims work.  There is little regulation or control over  packaging. The only part of dog food packaging that is (relatively)  controlled is the ingredient and analytical constituent’s panel.

Much  like human food labelling, the ingredient panel must be presented with  the largest ingredient first and then each ingredient thereafter in  order of largest quantity to smallest.  This, and the constituents  panel, should be the only thing you are looking at when deciding on a  food…completely ignore anything written on the front!

But while it would be nice to think they can’t possibly manipulate an ingredients panel…they can!

Here are some big red flags to look out for when checking out an ingredient panel:

The  first one is unclear or ambiguous ingredients!  If you have a lot of  umbrella terms such as ‘cereals’, ‘meat and animal derivatives’ or other  generic terms like ‘oils and fats’ or ‘derivatives of vegetable  origin’…do you actually have any idea what they’re talking about?
Using  these umbrella terms allows a producer to use whatever ingredients they  want every time they make a new batch of food without having to notify  customers of an ingredient change.  This is why they can use whatever  ingredients are the cheapest at the time of production.

This often results in sudden an unexplainable gastrointestinal issues in dogs even though owners “haven’t’ changed their food”

What  you should be looking for on an ingredient panel is clear, specifically  named ingredients with percentages because this prevents the producer  from changing their ingredients from batch to batch. Although if the  food is still packed with fillers such as wheat, maize, soy, potato or  corn it’s probably safe to say it’s still not going to be a very  high-quality food!  Those ingredients are inexpensive and used to bulk  out dog foods while offering little nutritional value.

Secondly, look at the ingredients…does it look like there are a couple, or several, that look similar?  

In  a bid to try and make ingredient panels look better, producers may  group or split related ingredients to alter the percentages.  
This  tends to be done in relation to the fillers such as grains or potato.   For instance, listing brown rice, white rice, and rice flour separately  to move them individually further down the ingredient panel.  This  practice is used to make the meat content look like it is the number one  ingredient and reduce the significance of the fillers…However if you  add up the individual percentages, you’ll see a different story.
Similarly, they will group meat ingredients to imply a higher meat content.

Another  massive red flag is any food with ‘various sugars’ added to it, which  can otherwise be listed as syrup, sucrose, or caramel.  This is a big  ol’ nope!  There is not a single reason for sugar to be added to dog  food!

Here are some real-life examples…

This is the highest rated dog kibble available on the market, swinging in at over £80 a bag:

Fresh  Chicken (25%), Raw Turkey (8%), Fresh Chicken Giblets 7% (Liver,  Heart), Raw Whole Herring (6%), Raw Whole Hake (5%), Fresh Eggs (5%),  Raw Turkey Liver (5%), Dehydrated Chicken (4%), Dehydrated Turkey (4%),  Dehydrated Mackerel (4%), Dehydrated Sardine (4%), Dehydrated Herring  (4%), Whole Red Lentils, Whole Chickpeas, Whole Peas, Chicken Fat (3%),  Whole Green Lentils, Whole Pinto Beans, Whole Navy Beans, Lentil Fibre,  Pollock Oil (1%), Pea Starch, Dried Kelp, Fresh Whole Pumpkin, Fresh  Whole Butternut Squash, Fresh Whole Zucchini, Fresh Whole Carrots, Fresh  Whole Apples, Fresh Whole Pears, Dried Chicory Root, Fresh Kale, Fresh  Spinach, Fresh Beet Greens, Fresh Turnip Greens, Whole Cranberries,  Whole Blueberries, Whole Saskatoon Berries, Turmeric, Milk Thistle,  Burdock Root, Lavender, Marshmallow Root, Rosehips.

A  nice clear ingredient panel with percentages which when added  altogether you have a 66.3% meat content including fish, no unnecessary  fillers and an amazing variety of vegetables, appropriate fruits and  botanicals which all equate to a fantastic example of a nutritionally  complete food.

In comparison, we  have a supermarket own brand representing the lowest rated dog kibble  available.  It does come in at a more budget friendly £12, but at what  nutritional cost?  
On the bag it advertises as ‘Beef And Vegetables’, would you say that is accurate?

Cereals,  Meat and Animal Derivatives (4% Beef in the Red and Brown Components),  Derivatives of Vegetable Origin, Oils and Fats, Various Sugars,  Vegetable Protein Extracts, Minerals, Vegetables (4% Vegetables in the  Brown Components), Yeasts, Colourants, Antioxidants 125mg/kg

The  first red flag should be that the food is coloured!  In looking at the  ingredients you can see straight away that the entire ingredient panel  is made up of umbrella terms, but they have given two percentages.  But  those two percentages make up a minute amount of the overall food,  leaving a lot of question marks hanging over what is actually being put  into the food…because it could be anything!  

As  they have listed ‘cereals’ and ‘meat and animal derivatives’ with only  4% beef, this means they are free to put in as little meat as possible,  and whatever other ingredients in, so long in any future batches have  that 4% beef present.  

But while  it is fairly typical that the lower priced dog foods will be of a  significantly poorer quality…it doesn’t mean that a higher price equals a  better food.

For instance, here is the panel from a well-respected brand and one that hits the wallet hard with a price tag of £70 a bag!  
This  is a food that has bold claims on its packaging such as ‘natural,  wholesome and complete’ and while the limited ingredient panel means it  would be suitable for dogs on an exclusion diet, nutritionally you could  do a lot better:

Brown Rice 67%, Chicken Meal 20%, Oats, Peas, Chicken Oil, Sunflower Oil, Seaweed, Vitamins & Minerals.

Yes,  it does have clear specifically listed ingredients, with percentages,  which is excellent and what we want to see.  But can you see the  problem?  While the dog food is marketed on the bag as being ‘Chicken  & Rice’…it’s probably safer to say it is ‘Rice with a little bit of  chicken’.

You are paying £70 for a  bag of rice.  Given you can buy 1kg of rice for as little as 59p from  supermarkets…can anyone explain why 12kg of rice which is £7 from the  supermarket suddenly becomes £70 when a little bit of chicken and oil is  added?  Yeah, we’re baffled too!

But it gets better!  Let’s take a closer look at prescription or ‘vet recommended’ diets!

This  food, by a well-known brand that is religiously pushed by the  veterinary sector, and swinging in at over £60 for a 10kg bag sits  amongst the lowest rated dog foods available:

Maize,  Wheat, Chicken and Turkey Meal, Soybean Meal, Animal Fat, Digest, Maize  Gluten Meal, Vegetable Oil, Dried Beet Pulp, Minerals, Flaxseed, Pork  Cartilage, Crustacean Shell Hydrolysate.

This  food is 98.8% carbs…then take away the oils and other bits in there,  you have roughly a 2% meat content.  FOR £60 PER BAG!  Much like the  previous example, this is shameful pricing.  
Yet for  barely £10-£15 more, or in some cases of prescription diets, for  significantly less money, you can have the first example we provided  with the remarkable ingredient panel!  
You can be sure on which one we’d be choosing!

You  have probably gotten the picture by this point…but there is one last  marketing ploy we want to address and that is breed specific food.  This  is without a doubt completely redundant.  

There  are a few very well-known brands on the market that tout breed specific  diets…but when you actually go through and read the ingredients panel  on each one, they are all pretty similar!

They  are a money maker, nothing more!  One well-known brand that provides  breed specific food currently has one available on the market for  chihuahuas.  It is made up of 98% carbs, while another designed for  dalmatians doesn’t even have any meat in it!  Yet they are charging  upward of £60 per bag for the privilege.

While  this brand doesn’t cater to greyhounds, there are a number of greyhound  specific kibbles on the market…and we’re sorry to say but they are  amongst the worst rated foods on the market!

For  instance, we have this food which is marketed as a maintenance food for  retired greyhounds and it is all just one big red flag:

Cereals,  Meat and Animal Derivatives, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin, Oils and  Fats, Minerals, Products from the Processing of Plants, Flavours,  Preservatives.

Though at £12 per  bag, it is very desirable given the current financial crisis.  A lot of  people are having to make cut backs and in being marketed as a greyhound  food, a lot of people buy it thinking it’s the best option!
But  with a 2.6% meat content and wide use of umbrella terms across the  entire ingredient panel, you have no idea what any of ingredients are!

This  is especially concerning in the use of unspecified ‘flavours’ and  ‘preservatives’.  The most commonly used artificial antioxidants  (preservatives) in pet food are known tumour promoters and are linked to  a number of other health issues.  Any food with unspecified  preservatives should be avoided for this reason.

Another  example of greyhound kibble, which is only marginally better given the  lack of preservatives, is then let down in the fact that it only has a  0.5% meat content:

Cereals, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin, Meat & Animal Derivatives, Oils and Fats, Minerals.

In  turning to these budget friendly dog foods, you are saving money at the  cost of appropriate nutrition which could lead to costly vet bills!

We  have seen so many hound owners move off these so-called greyhound foods  after speaking to us and the difference has always been immediate.   Significantly less waste (poo), no more digestive issues and no more  farting from the get-go, and over time, their fur grew in fuller, and  their overall demeanour improved!  

As  you can tell, when it comes to dog food the quality is not necessarily  linear with price, and there are lots of ways in which manufacturers try  to attract you to their products!  This is why it is so important to be  able to see past initial impressions and translate labelling into  logic, so to make informed choices.

The  best you can do for your dog is provide the highest quality food that  you can afford within your budget.  No one can ask more than that.  But  the moral of the story…always read the ingredients!

Still  confused?  Don’t have time to stand reading every pack in the  supermarket aisle to decide?  As people who are very passionate about  canine nutrition, our absolute favourite website is the All About Dog  Food directory!

It is the  leading directory for dog food and treats, as well as being an  invaluable resource packed with information, which can help you make  informed choices on the best food for your hound!
You can check it out here: https://www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk/