That depends. Do you know what ingredients are in your pet’s food? Do you know what the ingredients actually mean? Do you know what to look for, and what to avoid?
Pet food labeling can be confusing at the best of times, so here are a few key tips to get you started.
1. Know thy meats.
Meats to avoid: any By-Product (using Chicken as an example).
If you look at your pet’s food right now and you read “Chicken By-Product Meal”, you should be looking to upgrade your pet’s diet.
Chicken By-Product Meal is defined by AAFCO (the American Association of Feed Control Officials) as: “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”.
What does this mean? In short terms, Chicken By-Product Meal is mainly animal leftovers – not real meat. This applies to any meat by-product meal, not just chicken.
..even this guy feels betrayed, and he doesn’t own a dog..
Meats to look for: Human-Grade Fresh Meat & Meals (using Chicken as an example).
This is where most pet owners get confused. Chicken By-Product Meal and Chicken Meal are often seen as similar ingredients to consumers because of the term “Meal”. Chicken By-Product Meal is actually three separate terms; “Chicken” indicates the meat source, “By-Product” indicates the parts of the animal, and “Meal” essentially refers to the concentration of the ingredient.
Pet food manufacturers are not permitted to list “Human-Grade” on their packaging, but are allowed to provide such information on their websites and promotional literature. If you aren’t sure if your pet’s food uses human-grade ingredients or not, it would be worth looking into (you can also ask us!).
Most human-grade manufactures will use either “Chicken”, or “Chicken Meal”. These terms refer to real meat, cartilage, ground bone and connective tissue. As long as the quality of these ingredients is human-grade, or even better, Certified Organic, then you are on the right track.
2. Insane in the grain.
Grains to avoid: Any grain that is not whole (using Rice as an example).
For this article, I’m not going to spend any time debating the grain vs grain-free lifestyle – that is a huge topic for another day.
Since most pet foods on the market contain such a wide variety of grain, and a myriad of grain-related terms, this can be quite overwhelming for consumers. If you see “Rice Bran”, “Brewers Rice”, or “Rice Flour”, you may want to consider a diet change.
Rice Bran is defined by AAFCO as: “the outer coating of the rice kernel, with little or none of thestarchy part of the germ”.
What does this mean? Rice Bran is essentially what’s leftover once the best parts of rice have been removed.
Grains to look for: Any Whole Grain (using Rice as an example).
AAFCO defines Whole Brown Rice (Ground Brown Rice) as: “the entire product obtained by grinding the rice kernels after the hulls have been removed”.
Obviously this is a no-brainer. Whole grains are just that – whole.
Consumers should also be wary of “grain-splitting”. Grain splitting is the result of a company trying to avoid the fact their product contains more grain (usually not whole grain) than meat. This can be tricky to spot at first, but if you know what to look for you will see right through the smoke-and-mirrors.
Dear pet food manufacturers, you can’t sweep this under the rug anymore – we see you! Sincerely, the entire world.
Have a look at your pet food ingredient deck. If you notice the same grain listed multiple times – Rice Bran, Rice Flour, Brewer’s Rice – then you’ve discovered grain-splitting. These ingredients are processed in different ways so they can be listed individually on the ingredient deck.
If you group those ingredients together as a single ingredient, then odds are you will not have meat as your first ingredient, and you may want to consider a diet change.
I will follow up with more parts to this article very soon, but in the meantime take this opportunity to study your pet’s food. The better you understand what you’re reading, the better equipped you will be to ensure you are feeding your furry-family-members the absolute best you can.
Please feel free to share your comments!
photo credit: swissrolli
photo credit: Timmy Toucan
