Ask Bill: Ingredients to Avoid
Pet Food Ingredients 101: It's a big time for advertising and you may be receiving lots of coupons from various pet food companies. As always, please make sure you are carefully checking the ingredients list on any food you may be given an incentive to try. "Cheap" food is just that, made up of mostly poor ingredients and fillers. Here are some ingredients you should avoid, and why.
Glutens (corn, wheat, soy) are used as fillers to boost protein content. The only reason these ingredients exist in pet food is to artificially raise the protein content to acceptable levels. Protein in pet food should come from MEAT sources, not grain. Dog food recalls last year were due to contaminated gluten. The question should not have been why is there contaminated gluten in the food, but why is there any gluten in there at all?
Unnamed meat sources are unnamed for a reason - because we are not sure what kind of "animal" is in there. Not only is this ingredient poor quality, it can be extremely dangerous. In 1985 the University of Minnesota did a study about the survival of sodium pentobarbital (used to euthanize animals) through the rendering process and the FDA found low levels of the stuff in some brands of dog food*. Now, while the traces are not significant, it once again begs the question...why is it in there at all?
Avoid the various dyes commonly used in pet food. Their only purpose is to make the food look more like various vegetables in an attempt to play to human sensibilities. VEGGIES should be in the food, not dyes. Some dyes have been found to be linked to cancer and birth defects in lab animals. Dyes do not make the food more enticing or palatable to pets, and they certainly don't make the food healthier. So why are they in there at all?
Grain fractions are used to fool the consumer into thinking there is more meat in the food than grain by "splitting" ingredients. (ie: rice, rice flour and rice bran. Together they would appear much higher on the ingredient list.) Brewer's rice is the floor sweepings and broken pieces leftover from the rice industry, commonly sold to the brewing industry. It should be called "brewer's dust" not "rice".
*For more information on what exactly goes into rendered products visit these websites:
Where Do Euthanized Animals Go
Outcry Over Pets In Food
Food Not Fit for a Pet
Horrifying - Laboratory Animals rendered into Pet Food