What is "quality"?

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#21
To me, "quality" means:

1. No fillers

2.No artificial colors/flavors

3. No corn

4. Healthful foods, like carrot, potato, veggies, etc.

5. A balanced protein/fat content

"Poor Quality" Foods:

1. Have fillers, artificial colors/flavors, no nutritional value, corn, un natural ingredients.

Examples:

-Beneful
-Iams
-Pedigree
-Eukanuba
-"Mighty Dog"
-Purina (Granted, most of these are made by the same company)
 

Mordy

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#24
I have an idea to solve the corn disagreement. Give your dog some corn (no additives, salt, whatever), and then keep an eye on its 'exiting matter' :lol-sign:
That's not the way corn is used in pet foods though!

What you are talking about are the unripe corn kernels the way they are consumed as a vegetable. Dogs don't have the dentition nor digestive capacity to break down plant cell walls, so you would see the same incompletely digested matter in the stool if you gave your dog a whole raw carrot, or a raw apple.

It's an entirely different story if you run fruits and veggies through a food processor or blender and then feed them.

In pet food, fully ripe, dry, ground corn kernel is used, which has a high starch content (the part that "puffs" up in popcorn). This is the same version that is used to make things like corn bread or corn tortillas, or corn flakes and other corn-based cereals.

Like any other grain-based sources of starch, be it white or brown rice, barley, millet, oats, rye, wheat, quinoa, amaranth and so on and so forth, corn used and processed in this capacity is highly digestible. It does have a higher amount of fiber than other grains, especially if the whole ground corn is used and certain manufacturer use feed-grade corn that isn't particularly rich in starch content.

And without starch, there is no kibble - because the little pieces would simply fall apart if they weren'theld together by the gelatinized starches.
 

ToscasMom

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#25
I'll admit, Hill's did purchase us each a copy of our Small Animal Clinical Nutrition textbook, which is awesome because I really didn't want to spend another $100 on yet another textbook...
I'm shocked! Shocked I tell you! :lol-sign:
 

Gerald

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#26
I have been reading these posts for months now. I would believe anything that Morty said. She is smart, caring and does her research before talking about anything.
 
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#27
So, what are some examples of fillers?

Here are the ingredients of Ol' Roy Premium, as provided on the Dog Food Project website:

Ingredients:
Ground yellow corn, meat and bone meal, ground whole wheat, soybean meal, wheat middlings, animal fat (preserved with BHA and citric acid), chicken by-product meal, rice, animal digest, salt, calcium carbonate, potassium chloride, choline chloride, ferrous sulfate, zinc oxide, vitamin E supplement, niacin, copper sulafate, manganous oxide, vitamin A supplement, calcium pantothenate, biotin, vitamin B12 supplement, pyridoxine hydrochloride, thiamine mononitrate, menadione sodium bisulfite (complex source of vitamin K), calcium iodate, vitamin D3 supplement, riboflavin supplement, cobalt carbonate, folic acid, sodium selenite

What fillers are in there?
 
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#28
Everything!

The first ingredient in that is CORN. NOT good for dogs. wheat and by-product are also unhealthy, not easily digestable ingedients for dogs

NONE of those things you listed are NATURAL. all crud
 
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#32
Oh man, yuck. I feed Eukanuba Prescrition Diet Eek! Well, I've read the ingredients, and they aren't bad. They keep my dog from getting sick, so it makes me happy :)
 

IliamnasQuest

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#33
Quality definitely depends on the ingredients, not only what the ingredients are but of what quality each specific ingredient is (human-grade ingredients are often of higher/safer quality than pet grade).

It is a false statement to say "corn is not digestible". There are parts of corn, just like there are parts of some rice and grains, that are not digestible. But corn is a common food for horses and other livestock and they do quite well with it. In fact, too much corn can create problems for them (in horses, it can be too "hot") - and that wouldn't happen if it wasn't digestible!

We can eat cooked corn and if we chew it properly it doesn't all pass through undigested. The processing of the various ingredients makes a huge difference as to how much is digested.

I worry much less about corn and grains than I do artificial preservatives and colors/flavorings. For the most part, some corn is not going to hurt a normal healthy dog. They may pass through the undigestible parts, but they'll handle the rest okay unless they have some sort of sensitivity to it.

I prefer a food that has a high content of meats as opposed to a high content of grains, and of course good quality foods that contain a lot of meat will cost more. Many dog foods list a meat source as the first ingredient, and then several variations of rice or other grain/starch type ingredients - it makes it appear like the meat source is the most important, while it really contains mostly grains/starches. In addition, it's good to avoid by-products or meat meals if possible because they can be a mix of "parts" - including parts from diseased animals or ones who were euthanized with drugs. If a food lists "chicken" instead of "chicken meal" or "chicken by-products", I'd say that the food is probably of a better quality.

I know people are absolutely down on Science Diet, but I have to say that when I was a vet tech Science Diet helped turn around the health of MANY animals that came through the clinic. Back then we didn't have the choices here that we do now, and SD was definitely better than what most people fed. In addition, their Prescription Diets kept many dogs and cats from dying. People don't like to hear that, but I saw it first hand. Many pet owners do NOT want to bother with fixing their own foods and dogs and cats with serious health problems maintained or got better on Prescription Diet foods.

I fed SD to my own dogs and cats for many years and they did beautifully on the food. I switched because I learned more about the artificial ingredients and didn't like that they couldn't manage to preserve their foods in a different way. But in all honesty, my animals did very well on those foods. My two cats, who ate SD for probably 10-12 years, lived to be 16 and almost 20 years old. All of my dogs have lived to be at least ten, I have a chow that is now 15 who ate SD from puppyhood until she was eight. I've had no problems with tumors, heart disease, liver disease, kidney disease, etc. Of my last two dogs (both who had eaten SD for years), one was euthanized at ten because of increasing aggression due to epilepsy that we couldn't control any longer with drugs (she was healthy otherwise) and the other had degenerative myelopathy. I switched his diet to raw and I do think it helped him live a bit longer, but I don't believe that the DM was caused by his food. He was a big - oversized - German shepherd and he lived to 11 1/2.

These days I am feeding one meal of kibble (not SD) and one meal of Honest Kitchen dehydrated mixed with raw meat and various supplements. I pay $55-65 per ten pound bucket of dehydrated food (it rehydrates to about 20 pounds). Most people wouldn't do that, but I love what I see in my dogs since I've started this, and with three older dogs (9, 10 and 15) it's worth it to me. This is an extremely high-quality food to me and it isn't because of the price - it's 100% human grade ingredients and has a good mix of meats, veggies and fruits (and some grains in some versions) along with a variety of vitamins and oils.

My dogs have never had a problem with grains and so I don't worry about them too much. I've even been known to add oatmeal to their food at times!

Melanie and the gang in Alaska
 

DanL

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#34
I'll really add some fuel to the fire.

Good=raw
Bad=everything else.

:popcorn:
 

dogstarsleddogs

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#35
If a food lists "chicken" instead of "chicken meal" or "chicken by-products", I'd say that the food is probably of a better quality.
If I am not mistaken, you would want chicken meal over chicken. Since dog food ingrediants are measured by thier hydrated weights, chicken would naturally come first. But once you dehydrate then, and cook it, it sudden falls down, making whatever is #2 (or even #3) first. And if the #2 slot is corn, you've suddenly got an Iams quality product. Now, chicken meal, on the other hand, has little water to start out with, so it stays up at top once its been cooked.
Right?
 

iheartsammy

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#36
I'll really add some fuel to the fire.

Good=raw
Bad=everything else.

:popcorn:
:hail:

I'm kinda being hipacritical (wow, spelt that wrong) because I feed kibble instead of Raw, but the second I get my lisence and a job I'm going out to the market to get some meat! :D bye bye kibble!

ok I'm done! :D
 

Mordy

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#37
If I am not mistaken, you would want chicken meal over chicken. Since dog food ingrediants are measured by thier hydrated weights, chicken would naturally come first. But once you dehydrate then, and cook it, it sudden falls down, making whatever is #2 (or even #3) first. And if the #2 slot is corn, you've suddenly got an Iams quality product. Now, chicken meal, on the other hand, has little water to start out with, so it stays up at top once its been cooked.
Right?
Right! :)

Fresh meat still contains up to 75% moisture before processing, so in the worst case, if a kibble doesn't contain any concentrated form of meat in meal form, you can end up with only around 4-5 oz of actual meat protein in the finished product for every pound of fresh meat that was included.

Considering that many products already start out with a ratio of only one pound of meat per 2-3 pounds of grain (or even less), that's pretty low.

Ideally a kibble includes both, some fresh meat that will end up somewhat less processed, and a non-generic source of meat meal that brings in a good level of animal-based protein. Given a choice between one that only includes fresh meat and one that only includes meat meal (again, only non-generic sources, and preferably no byproducts), the latter will generally be the better option.
 

Boemy

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#38
I didn't realize that Natural Balance had a "bad" reputation . . . That's what I fed to my cats (their kitty brand) and they did fine on it. I checked the ingredients, they were fine . . . I've heard people raving about NutroMax, but it gave my boys the stinkiest poop ever, I'll never use it again.

Right now I use Kirkland's because it's higher quality than Purina, etc, but still cheap. Natural Balance was really killing my bank account.
 
B

Bobsk8

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#39
I didn't realize that Natural Balance had a "bad" reputation . . . That's what I fed to my cats (their kitty brand) and they did fine on it. I checked the ingredients, they were fine . . . I've heard people raving about NutroMax, but it gave my boys the stinkiest poop ever, I'll never use it again.

Right now I use Kirkland's because it's higher quality than Purina, etc, but still cheap. Natural Balance was really killing my bank account.
It does on this forum by a few. ;) I think it is an excellent food and I have tried a bunch of the "recommended foods" with poor results.
 

Mordy

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#40
Natural Balanec doesn't have a bad rep at all. It's a nice food, especially as far as what's available at Petco is concerned.

The only issue it has become recently is that Bobsk8 is pushing it at every opportunity like he's getting paid for it. lol
 

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