Mary Allen
The ingredients on dog food labels are just as misleading as they are on food. As an informed dog owner, you should therefore read the labels twice.
Well-sounding names often hide dubious ingredients.
The lobby and industry associations are consciously fighting for obscure designations. For me, the ingredients often border on label fraud.
Analytical constituents of dog food
Statutory minimum requirements tend to be confusing. Because not everyone knows what is hidden behind these “raw” ingredients:
- Raw ash
- crude protein
- crude fiber
- raw fat
These are the so-called analytical components of dog food. However, these have more of a theoretical significance. The composition of the dog food should be comparable via the ratio of the ingredients.
Below we describe these four ingredients.
What is raw ash in dog food?
Raw ash looks the most disgusting at first glance.
However, the assumption is not correct that ash or combustion residues are added as cheap filling material.
The term raw ash is a hypothetical value. This indicates the number of minerals that would be left if the feed were burned.
Make sure the raw ash content is less than 4%. A higher value indicates inferior ingredients in dog food.
Crude protein in dog food
Does raw protein sound almost as good to you as raw food or raw meat?
That would be nice. Proteins only refer to protein compounds. However, that doesn’t mean that this raw protein is made from the finest beef steaks.
In addition, you cannot conclude from this mandatory information how usable the proteins are for your dog.
Dog food whose additives are camouflaged with it should not be considered a good and balanced dog diet.
What does crude fiber mean in dog food?
The indigestible part of plant components is given as crude fiber. Since dogs need very little fiber in their daily diet, the proportion should be less than 4%.
Crude fibers are particularly added to diet foods for overweight dogs. This increases the proportion of feed that cannot be used by the digestive tract.
What is crude fat in dog food?
Crude fat is also a theoretical value. It says nothing about the quality of the dog food.
This does not mean the layer of bacon on a butcher-quality pork belly. Rather, raw fat is the sum of the fats that could be chemically dissolved from the feed.
Let’s spare ourselves the disgusting details of the fat residues that accumulate in canteen kitchens and takeaways, for example. However, there is nothing to be said against high-quality oils such as those used in BARF.
Ingredients that should not be included
You can easily identify processed dog food by the following ingredients.
Dog food should not contain:
- Flavor enhancers, such as glutamate, monosodium glutamate, yeast extract
- fat additions
- grains such as wheat, soy, or corn
- dairy products
- carcass meal, animal meal
- animal by-products, behind them are inferior waste from the slaughtering industry
- vegetable by-products
- dairy products
- bakery products
These questionable additives are marked with E numbers:
- dyes
- flavorings
- preservatives
- attractants
- appetizer
Vegetable by-products in dog food
You can assume that “by-products” are garbage.
It doesn’t have to be bad junk. Because vegetable by-products also include corn on the cob from a farmer, which does not go into popcorn or polenta.
Roughly speaking, vegetable waste from agriculture is mostly grain or vegetables. They didn’t make it as food.
It doesn’t have to be due to poor quality. Perhaps the reason lies in seasonal overproduction.
The situation is somewhat different with plant by-products that are produced industrially. This includes straw, sugar beet pulp, press cake from oil mills, or peanut shells.
In these cases, I would assume that feed manufacturers are looking for the cheapest way to cut dog food.
Rich ingredients and healthy dog food are therefore a must for every dog owner.
Frequently Asked Question
How do I recognize bad dog food?
If your dog already has a dull coat, foul-smelling droppings of varying consistency, bad breath, and listlessness, the digestive tract and internal organs may already have been damaged by inferior food.
How do you recognize good dog food?
Good food usually has a meat content of over 50 percent, whereas inferior dog food contains little meat. The meat is also the most expensive ingredient in dog food, which is why healthy dog food with a high meat content is usually priced higher.
What to look out for with dry food?
Good dry dog food is characterized by the fact that it contains a high proportion of high-quality meat, lots of healthy nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and vitamins. Animal and vegetable by-products should not be processed in good dry dog food or only in very small proportions.
What is healthy dog food?
A healthy dog food consists mainly of high-quality muscle meat, offal a, and some vegetables, fruit, and herbs – all natural without chemical additives.
How much crude protein should be in dog food?
To ensure the supply of essential amino acids, an intake of around 2 to 6 g of dietary protein (crude protein) per kg of dog body weight is sufficient for adult dogs – whereby smaller dog breeds tend to need more protein, larger dog breeds relatively less.
How high should the meat content be in dog food?
The dog’s diet should contain between 50-70% high-quality meat. It ensures the construction of all tissue structures and provides proteins that are converted into energy.
What composition should dog food have?
The decisive factor is not the composition of the feed, but the analytical components! The optimal analysis of dry food for adult dogs could look like this: “Crude protein 23%, crude fat 10%, crude ash 4.9%, crude fiber 2.8%, calcium 1.1%, phosphorus 0.8%”.
Should a dog always be fed the same food?
Is it bad if a dog eats the same thing every day? The answer to this question is very simple: No, that’s not bad. You can feed your dog the same food every day without hesitation. While humans have around 9000 taste receptors, dogs only have around 1700.