When it comes to reading the ingredients on your dog food bag, it's not uncommon to feel like you need a special decoder ring. I mean, what is a poultry by-product meal? Or an animal digest? (Do I want my dog to digest something that sounds like it's already been previously digested? Has it been previous digested?!) And what is the different between beef and beef meal? Let's dive in and take a look at some of these things and more!
1. How to read the ingredient list -- Just like with people food, the ingredient list on your dog's food will start with the heaviest item and go down to the lightest one. Something to watch out for with this is the meat product that is listed. Since it can contain a majority of water-weight, how that meat is prepared before it is used is important to note. We'll look at this in the next section.
2. Meats, meals, and more -- Look over a few different bags of food, and you'll probably come across something like "chicken," "chicken meal," "animal digest," or "chicken by-products." These all mean something different. Let's break them down individually, as defined by the AAFCO website (https://www.aafco.org/Consumers/What-is-in-Pet-Food).
A) Meat: When used as a definer for what part of an animal was used (ie, when you see just "beef" as an ingredient), it denotes the striated muscle of that particular animal. It may include some surrounding tissue such as fat or skin. Used as a generic term for an ingredient, this means that the meat used in that food must come from either a cow, pig, sheep, or goat.
B) Meat By-Products: This means most everything other than the muscle meat of the mammal denoted above. It can include organs such as the lungs, kidneys, brain, liver, and spleen, as well as blood, bone, stomachs, and intestines (all cleaned out, of course). While sounding rather undesirable to us as humans, these parts are found to be safe and healthy to eat by our puppers.
C) Poultry: May include skin, meat, bone, back, and neck of the bird. Some listings of poultry will specify the type of bird used, and some will note that the bird has been deboned. All parts and pieces have been deemed acceptable for consumption by dogs, and the ground bone can be a good source of calcium.
D) Poultry By-Products: If poultry is akin to a raw chicken you would purchase from the grocery, the by-products would be all the parts they removed before that bird made it to the freezer section. Again, parts and pieces that don't sound too appetizing to us, but that your dog wouldn't snub their nose at if given the opportunity.
E) Meal: Whether a meat, poultry, or a by-product meal, this name means the same thing regardless of the protein source -- ground. Think hamburger. Having a protein meal is preferred over just the protein being listed because, when it's ground, you'll get more actual meat/protein and less water weight.
F) Animal Digest: The cleaning of an animal's tissue by hydrolysis. Typically treated with heat or enzymes to produce a natural flavoring.
When choosing a food for your furbaby, be sure and read the ingredients. Just like you would want to know what you're feeding yourself or your children, know what you're feeding your dog. They require meat protein, and a balance of fruits and vegetables with it (a lot like our own diet, but with an emphasis on the meat!). Keep in mind - corn protein (or vegetable protein in general) is not a complete protein, which means that unlike meat, it cannot give your dog all of the amino acids they require for proper health...but, that's a conversation for a different blog. For now, bon appetit!
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