Ah, the pet food industry. That multi-billion dollar industry that is the reason and the bane of my existence. The advertising gurus, marketing geniuses, food science formulators, veterinary experts and the poor, misinformed, well-intentioned pet owners.
This post has the potential to read like an encyclopedia so I will break it down over the next several into kibble sized, digestible chunks. Today I will focus on the advertising component, one of the worst things that ever happened to pet food and probably a lot of other industries.
For every product or service available there is a finite amount of money available to produce it. This price is related to its eventual retail price which is governed by good ol' economics and the laws of supply and demand. One of the ways to increase the demand portion is through advertising, and that, my friends, is mega expensive. So when you buy a food you have seen advertised on tv with "more meat" for example, and you pay $12 you are not getting $12 worth of food, you are getting, at best, $2 worth of food and $10 in advertising bills.
Take the first 5 ingredients of a very popular and heavily advertised grocery store brand "original formula":
"Ground yellow corn, chicken by-product meal, corn gluten meal, whole wheat flour, animal fat"
Corn, byproducts, more corn, wheat and "animal fat", um, what animal you might ask? They don't know, that's why it says animal, and FYI, animal can include road kill and euthanized pets, not to be too alarmist. Now it gets better, lets check out the next five ingredients:
"rice flour, beef, soy flour, sugar, propylene glycol"
Rice and beef, not bad, but soy (it’s a big allergen), sugar and propylene glycol? Wait! Isn't propylene glycol used in windshield washer fluid? Yes. It's also sweet, as is sugar, and dogs like sweet things. Sort of like soda and kids, obesity epidemic, anyone?
One of the more insidious advertising methods is the use of veterinarians and their enormous clout with the pet owning public. After all, who is the first person you turn to with questions regarding your pet? Unfortunately, nutrition is not the strong suit of most vets, and has been sorely neglected by the educational programs at most veterinary schools. Along come the ever helpful pet food companies, Purina, Hill's (Science Diet), Iams and Royal Canin to "teach" seminars which more or less consist of "feed our foods and all will be right in the world. After the schooling is done many of these companies offer "veterinary prescription diets" with high markups and valuable incentive programs for the vet clinics. Unfortunately these foods are often not much better than the above grocery formula. Let's see, shall we? Here's a commonly "prescribed" formula for "dental health":
"Brewers Rice, Ground Whole Grain Corn, Chicken By-Product Meal, Powdered Cellulose, Pork Fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols and citric acid), Soybean Mill Run, Soybean Oil, Chicken Liver Flavor"
Okay rice, corn, by-products, looks familiar so far. Powdered cellulose? Basically some form of fiber chemically treated through a ton of harsh chemicals to make a white, high fiber powder. Original source fiber could be flax, wheat, cotton, sawdust, peanut hulls or any other fiber imaginable. Pork fat, hey it says pork so we know its not animal, not bad and actually those preservatives are the fancy words for vitamin E and vitamin C, so that's really not too bad at all. And then more bad, "soybean mill run", its soy (allergen), but what is mill run? Soybean mill run is composed of soybean hulls and such bean meats that adhere to the hulls which results from normal milling operations in the production of dehulled soybean meal. (AAFCO, 2003). Hmm, can't say that sounds particularly nutritious. On to soybean oil, again soy, I'll leave it at that and chicken liver flavor, why flavor? Because the food tastes like sawdust and soybean hulls otherwise.
To compare, let's look at a brand with no national tv spots, that advertises through good products that speak for themselves, supports independent retailers and has been at the forefront of product innovation for years. You might not have heard of them. The parent company is Natura and they revolutionized pet food a few years back by introducing grain free dry foods which have now taken the world by storm. They make several different brands that each have a niche in the marketplace including Innova, California Natural and EVO as well as a few others. Let's look at the first 10 ingredients of Innova's basic adult dry diet:
"Turkey, Chicken, Chicken Meal, Barley, Brown Rice, Potatoes, Rice, Chicken Fat, Flaxseed, Herring"
Need I say more?
