Make Sure You're Not Feeding Your Pet Junk Food

By Christina Zulandi

Remember the pet food scare of 2007? Hundreds of dogs and cats died of complications officials speculated were tied to rat poison in pet foods manufactured overseas. And for a while pet owners were particularly aware of the brands they bought, where they were manufactured, what ingredients they contained, and so on. With good reason! Pet foods don’t require pre-market approval from the FDA before they’re sold to the public. And because of that, a lot of what goes into your dog and cat’s food is … well … junk.

My dog was still a puppy back in 2007. I really felt for the people that lost their pets and was also concerned about my own dog! When I looked into pet food, I found that there are a lot of pet foods out there that are equivelent to junk food! I want my family to get proper nutrition daily so that they grow up healthy and strong - so I don't feed them fast food for every meal (or even close)! Sadly, a lot of pet food on the market is equivalent to just that: fast food all day, everyday.

The good news is that you don't have to spend tons of money on fancy, organic, all-natural dog and cat food. These types of pet food often cost significantly more and aren't always better. I've included some tips below on choosing the best quality pet food for your furry friends while keeping within your budget.

Separating the nutritious food from the downright atrocious comes down to deciphering the nutrition labels on the bags. Just like you know to avoid certain ingredients (like high-fructose corn syrup and partial hydrogenated oils, for example) in your family’s food, there are a few basic pet food ingredients you want to be on the look out for as well. The Dog Food Project is a great resource to get unbiased help on reading pet food labels. I give the bigger take-aways below but check out their site for more detail.

Reading pet food nutrition labels: What you want, and what you want to avoid at all costs

1. Go to the ingredients list and start by finding the source of fat. All ingredients before the fat source make up the bulk of the food.
2. Whole chicken, beef, lamb or fish seem like good first ingredients, but you don't want to base your decision just on the order of the ingredients. Just because they are listed first doesn’t actually mean they’re main ingredient. When initially added these ingredients contain mostly water. But when they get dehydrated the end product may represent only trivial amounts of meat.
3. The best first ingredients are chicken meal, beef meal, lamb meal or fish meal because they’re added in their already dehydrated state.
4. Avoid by-products whenever possible. If you need to go with pet food that contains by-products, stick with chicken by-product or beef by-product and be sure to avoid meat by-product.
5. Since there are no strict regulations in place for pet food, ingredients labeled meat and animal can mean just about anything. Avoid pet foods with these type of generic terms. (If it's a quality ingredient, the manufacturer will be specific.)
6. Avoid pet foods that contain meat-and-bone meal.
7. Avoid pet foods that contain corn and brewers rice or make sure that they are low on the list of ingredients.

Let’s look at an example. The following lists are the ingredients (up to the fat source) on the last two bags of dog food I bought:
- Lamb meal, cracked pearled barley, oatmeal, ground rice, chicken fat.
- Lamb meal, brewers rice, ground wheat, wheat germ meal, lamb, brown rice, animal fat.

As you can see, the second list contains brewers rice and animal fat; both of which aren’t optimal ingredients. Both of the bags cost about $30 for a 40 pound bag. You can spend more to get food with even better ingredients. But the main point is that without spending any more money, I was able to distinguish and pick the good pet food over the junk pet food - without spending any more money. The best part is that, in the long run, I'm likely to save hundreds in vet bills by giving my pet proper nutrition.

Ingredients are not the only thing to consider in pet foods. Other factors like moisture content and preservatives play a role. Check out The Dog Food Project for details on deciphering pet food labels.