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Unidentified ingredients e.g. ‘poultry derivatives’, are
usually very low quality (if you put in chicken breast, let’s face it,
you are going to state that is chicken breast!) There are no official
definitions for derivatives!
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Wet ingredients are misleading in a food that will be dried –
20% of wet chicken in the ingredients becomes around 4% of the finished
product analysis if mixed with lots of dry grain. So a dried food that
has 4% of meat in the ingredient list has only around 1% of meat in the
final dried product!!!!
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Maize gluten is the dried residue from corn after the removal of
the larger part of the starch and germ. Often you will see both maize
and maize gluten listed in a diet - so you could have 15% of each i.e.
30% maize in total, and this would be appear lower down the list than,
say, 16% fresh chicken (which becomes 4% once in the finished diet). You
think there is loads of chicken with a few other bit and bobs when there
is actually 4% chicken, plus 30% maize - as well as the rest of the beet
pulp, wheat etc etc!
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Let's now consider
protein
- remember our mallard consisting of 60% protein and nil
carbohydrates?
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Horn and hair is protein, but has little biological value
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Meat and bone meal is an extremely low quality ingredient. It is
the rendered product from mammal tissues, including bone – more suited
as a fertilizer. It can include animals that died from disease, along as
it is cooked to a certain specification.
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The AAFCO definition of chicken by-product meal is
'consisting
of the ground, rendered, clean parts of the carcass of slaughtered
chicken, such as necks, feet, undeveloped eggs and intestines'.
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Soya is a controversial ingredient in dog food, and is used
as a cheap source of vegetable protein.
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Vegetable protein is often not differentiated from animal protein
in the analysis – you
cannot tell how much of the protein is derived from animals.
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The moral here is
don’t look at the protein figure on its own - it's the quality and
source of the protein that matters. And remember that in the wild,
carnivores have a diet with a protein content of 50% or more. Good quality
protein is NOT a problem, even in high quantities. Large amounts of low
grade and/or vegetable protein can be!
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A few more marketing
tricks
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incomplete and
misleading labelling
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- using 'minimum'
levels when detailing undesirable components eg 'rice 26% minimum'
(what is the maximum?)
- lack of any
stated levels (no hope here)
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'scientifically
formulated'
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A
rabbit or a wolf does not have a nutritionalist in tow – if they eat
naturally there is no need.
It
might be suggested that the ‘science’ is only there because the food
is so un-natural that it is likely to be damaging to the animal if the
ingredients are not formulated carefully ('scientifically').
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It's expensive
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There is an automatic
assumption that because a food is expensive, then it must be good (a
diet of caviar would kill a hamster)
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Top breeders recommend
it!
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We feel that because a food is popular it must be good and healthy.
Cigarettes are very popular and very unhealthy. Equally 'top
breeders' are sometimes motivated by other things than their dog's
health!
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