Learn The Truth About The Price Of Pet Food Secrets To Comparing Pet Food Prices

Learn The Truth About The Price Of Pet Food Secrets To Comparing Pet Food Prices

I recently received an email asking my opinion about a couple of different types of pet foods - what I thought about the quality of the foods. Both of the pet foods he asked about (which he was feeding his family) were what I considered to be very inferior foods. Many pet owners suffer 'sticker shock' when considering purchasing a better quality food. Better quality foods/ingredients provide the animal with quality nutrition and they eat on average 1/3 less.

Let's say your pet currently eats 1 cup of food per day. A 20 pound bag of food will provide you with about 50 servings. If the food costs you $15.00 for a 20 pound bag - that equals about .30 per meal.

Now with a good quality pet food - feeding about 1/3 less - a 20 pound bag will provide you about 80 servings. If the better food costs $30.00 for a 20 pound bag - that breaks down to a little less than .38 cents a meal.

We've trusted them and we've followed their directions to feed our pet 2 or 3 cups of food per day. What we didn't know was that those recommended 2 or 3 cups of food was necessary because the pet food contained cheap inferior nutrition sources like by-products, meat and bone meal, and grains.

The determining factor for your choice of pet food should not be cost or advertising. Of course there is much more involved than the first five ingredients, but in my research...if the first five ingredients of a pet food are good, so are the rest of the ingredients. If a pet food manufacturer cares enough to make the first five ingredients quality - which is the majority of the food...they care enough to make all of the ingredients quality. Don't be mislead into any comfort zone of a pet food manufacturers advertising...do your homework and read and understand at least the first five ingredients of your pet's food.

With better, more nutritious pet foods - they do NOT need as much as with the cheaper foods. Don't let the old habit of feeding more sway you when you switch to a more nutritious pet food - again, with more quality ingredients they just don't need as much food as with inferior ingredients. If you switch your pet to a quality pet food and continue to feed the same amount as the lesser quality food you were feeding - your pet will gain weight.

Last year turned out to be the worst in history for pet food recalls. Judging the safety or the nutritional value of a pet food starts by ignoring the advertising, the price of the pet food, and ignoring the front of the bag. Regardless of what marketing terms ('choice', 'premium', and so on) are on the front of the bag or can of pet food, a pet owner cannot determine the quality or how safe the food is unless they look at the ingredients. With dry foods there can be 90 different ingredients (or more), with canned foods there can be 50 or more different ingredients. But don't panic...you don't have to understand hundreds of different pet food ingredients! You just need to be aware of a few key ingredients...pet food ingredients that you do NOT want to see in a dog food or cat food (or treats).

It is not that glutens themselves are toxic to pets - these ingredients have been used in pet foods for years. (The majority of glutens used in the US pet foods are from imported sources.) Not only is it important to avoid dog foods and cat foods (and dog and cat treats) that contain glutens because of the possibility of dangerous added chemicals, it is important because they add no real quality nutrition to the food. Glutens are used as a thickener AND as a source of protein in pet food. Adult maintenance dog foods must provide a minimum of 18% protein, adult maintenance cat foods must provide a minimum of 26% protein. If the meat source of the pet food does not provide enough protein, glutens are often added to boost the protein level of the pet food. The best nutrition for your pet comes from a meat protein pet food not from a gluten protein. Avoid dog foods and cat foods (and treats) that contain 'corn gluten', 'wheat gluten', or 'soy gluten'.

By-products have never been the cause of a pet food recall, but they are definitely ingredients you want to avoid feeding your pet. To give you an understanding of by-products, I'd like to compare this pet food ingredient to pies - you know, the dessert! Same thing with by-products in pet food.

It shall be suitable for use in animal food. All left over meat materials from the human food industry are clumped into one ingredient name - by-product. There is NO certainty of what you are feeding - one batch of pet food might be more intestine by-products while the next batch of pet food might be more liver or bone by-products. There is NO way of knowing what is actually contained in the pet food ingredient by-product (the pet food manufacturers themselves couldn't tell you exactly). Avoid dog foods and cat foods (and treats) that contain By-products of any kind...Chicken By-Products, Beef By-Products, Chicken By-Product Meal, Beef By-Product Meal, and so forth.

Again, a catch all ingredient name for the left-over parts of animals used for human food. No consistency to what is contained in these ingredients (all three of these pet food ingredient definitions are similar) - no way of knowing what is actually in your pet's food. Avoid dog foods, cat foods, and dog and cat treats that contain 'meat meal', 'meat and bone meal', or 'animal digest'.

In 2002 the FDA tested many different brands of dog food (cat food was not tested) for the presence of the drug pentobarbital. Many brands of dog food tested positive to contain the drug. How can the drug that is used to euthanize animals be found in pet food? The answer - euthanized animals are rendered (cooked) and the end ingredients are placed in pet food. The pet food manufacturers adamantly deny they use rendered dogs or cats - but NO clinical evidence has ever been released to confirm the pentobarbital is from euthanized cattle and horses in pet food as they claim.

However, the one thing the FDA/CVM has determined through their testing is the pet food ingredient 'animal fat' is the most common ingredient to contain pentobarbital. In other words, if you are feeding a dog food or cat food (or treats) with the ingredient 'animal fat' in the ingredient listing - you are (more than likely) feeding your pet euthanized animals. Not every batch of pet food tested that contained the ingredient 'animal fat' has proved to contain pentobarbital - but why would any pet owner want to take the chance? Avoid dog foods, cat foods, and dog and cat treats that contain the ingredient 'animal fat'.

All four of these chemical preservatives are rarely used to preserve human food and if so, are used in quantities far less than what is allowed in pet food. Avoid any dog food, cat food, or dog and cat treat that contains 'BHA', 'BHT', 'TBHQ', and 'Ethoxyquin' on the label.

There is more to selecting a true healthy pet food for your dog or cat than avoiding the above mentioned ingredients. This is just a start - based on pet food history, AAFCO ingredient definitions, science and opinion of many pet food experts including myself. There are many quality pet foods available that do NOT use the above ingredients and that add health promoting ingredients to their foods and treats. Just looking at the pet food ads on TV and in magazines, you'd get the impression that all commercial pet foods are healthy. All those fresh ingredients could tempt you to try these pet foods yourself! Now, if you're already aware that not all pet food commercials and ads live up to their promises, you should ask yourself a simple question: how can I tell if a particular pet food is healthy? To do well for your pet, you need to be able to interpret pet food labels correctly.

First and foremost, healthy pet foods contain real food ingredients.

Healthy commercial pet foods are made from natural food ingredients that reflect the needs of the pet for which the foods are intended. Remember that ingredients are listed in the order of their relative quantity in the pet food. Healthy dog and cat foods should contain animal-derived products as their first ingredients. The quality of these ingredients is absolutely essential to the health of your pet. Finally, the addition of synthetic chemicals should be kept to a minimum, as most of the available pet food supplements added routinely to pet foods are of low or questionable quality and value.

Second, healthy pet foods are certified organic.

This is true quite simply because organic ingredients are both safer and healthier for your pet. Third, healthy pet foods are made of human-grade quality ingredients.

The latter are called 'feed-grade' ingredients, and are approved for the use solely in pet foods. Feed-grade ingredients are certainly of lower quality than human-grade ingredients. So, if you're searching for a healthy pet food, look out for the descriptive word 'human-grade' on the pet food package! Never assume that pet food manufacturers are required to tell the consumer whether they use human-grade or feed-grade ingredients; they aren't. Fifth, healthy pet foods can be identified by the way they're processed.

Even certified organic pet foods, containing all of the appropriate ingredients for a particular species of pet, are not necessarily healthy. Healthy pet foods must offer more than just organic certification and species appropriateness. Dehydration is a better way to process foods-but keep in mind that cats in particular don't do well on dry food alone and that certain problems can even be associated with re-hydrated pet foods that were previously dehydrated. If fresh foods are unavailable, the best choices among commercial pet foods are products that have been fresh-frozen. Finally, a pet shouldn't live on one prepared pet food alone, even if it is healthy and nutritious.

See Other Article Here