DON'T PAY A PREMIUM FOR "PREMIUM" DOG FOODS

Detailed Review Top 5 Most Popular Dog Food brands and Best Buys

Today we shall be taking a concrete analysis of what brands truly makes this list base on how reliable they truly are. Relax while we carefully analyse what qualities truly make these ones most reliable and why they hit our Top 5 Most Reliable Dog Food Brands and where you can get cheap for quality.

No 5 of the Most Popular Dog Food brands in America

Purina Dog Chow

Purina Dog Chow is the fifth best-selling most popular dog food.

Product Overview

Puppy Chow is one of the iconic brands produced by Purina, along with its sister foods Dog Chow, Cat Chow, and Kitten Chow. Dog Chow was introduced in 1957 and Puppy Chow sometime after that as people moved to the suburbs and more people owned pets. These foods remain very popular today, despite the multitude of competitors’ foods and more upscale dog foods for sale today. It is a quintessential grocery store brand – easily identified by basically the same blue packaging for years. Generations of people have probably bought Puppy Chow because that’s what their parents fed their puppy when they were kids. There is enormous name brand recognition and the Purina name is well-respected by these consumers.
A look at the web site for Purina Dog Chow/Puppy Chow shows an emphasis on the dog owning experience and families, and very little information about the food itself which is in keeping with how the food is marketed and who Purina believes buys the food. However, there is some good information on the site about dog ownership and choosing a dog.

Main Ingredients

1. Whole grain corn
2. Poultry by-product meal
3. Corn gluten meal
4. Generic animal fat

It's whole grain corn, but a grain or other starch source as the primary ingredient is not a good thing. The two other main ingredients are poultry by-product meal followed by corn gluten meal.
Together they provide the bulk of the protein (21%) in this kibble. Poultry by-product meal is similar to chicken by-product meal except that it can come from any type of fowl. Remember that this ingredient does not include meat or quality organs.
Even so, it is still superior to corn gluten meal, a poorly digested but inexpensive protein source.
Next, we have the generic animal fat that is found in many of the best-selling dog foods, but at least this one is preserved with vitamin E, not the synthetic BHA.

Minor Ingredients

Minor ingredients include meat and bone meal, brewers rice, soybean meal, whole grain wheat, egg and chicken flavor, animal digest, salt, artificial colors, brewers dried yeast, and vitamin and mineral supplements.

To Sum It All Up

What's surprising is that this Purina food contains a number of amino acid chelated minerals, which is unusual for a product of this overall quality.

And no, given the profusion of grains, the generic animal proteins and fats, the presence of gluten and soybean meals, not to mention the artificial colors, I would not completely call this a quality product.

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No 4 of the Most Popular Dog Food brands in America

Kibbles'N Bits Original Chicken And Beef Flavor

Kibbles'N Bits Original Chicken And Beef Flavor is the forth best-selling most popular dog food.

Kibbles ‘n Bits Dog Food is made by Del Monte, the fifth largest manufacturing concern in the dog food market. According to Wikipedia, the brand was created in 1981 and at that time was the first “dual-textured” dog food, with both hard, crunchy kibble and softer, chewy bits. The H.J. Heinz Company bought the brand in 1995 and it was later sold to Del Monte. Their plant in Lawrence, Kansas produces about 1.7 millions pounds per day, and 9.9 million pounds per week. They produce 497 million pounds of Kibbles ‘n Bits Dog Food per year.

Main Ingredients

1. Corn and soybean meal
2. Beef and bone meal
3. Wheat flour
4. Generic animal fat
5. Even Corn Syrup(not a main ingredient, but...)

Corn and soybean meal lead the ingredient list, followed by beef and bone meal. True, it's not a generic meat source, but this is nonetheless a low quality product, frequently made from beef rejected for human consumption and by-products.

No quality meats or organs will ever find their way into a batch of beef and bone meal.

Next up we have wheat flour, which combines nutrient-poor, refined wheat flour with the offal from the "tail of the mill." This is essentially an empty filler ingredient.

The fat source is next and it's generic animal fat preserved with BHA and citric acid (see 10 Dog Food Ingredients To Avoid).
Following the fat source we have corn syrup, which is a disastrous ingredient for dental health and blood sugar levels. Sugars such as corn syrup have no place in a dog food and are a sure sign of low quality (usually added because dogs wouldn't touch the stuff without the sweeteners).

Other Minor Ingredients

Other minor ingredients include:

• Wheat middlings - a grain fraction and empty filler
• Water - due to the semi-moist component, this food is significantly higher in water content than pure kibbles
• Animal digest - highly processed, generic animal flavoring
• Wheat
• Propylene glycol - a humectant that is probably harmless in the occasional treat, but not something I like to see dogs eating every day; proven to cause anemia in cats but still allowed in dog foods
• The standard vitamin and mineral supplements
• Lots of natural and artificial food dyes
• Synthetic preservative BHA

To Sum It All Up

Kibbles'N Bits Dog Food;Original Chicken And Beef Flavor is junk food for dogs, complete with sweeteners and artificial colors, additives, and preservatives.

Unfortunately, I belive, dogs can become addicted to foods like this and refuse healthier fare when you try to make the switch, much like kids who turn down a fresh salad because they're used to eating fast food and potato chips every day.

Nonetheless, if you persevere, your dog will eventually eat the healthier food. Remember that there are now quality, human-grade foods that cost just a few dollars example includes Purina Dog Chow Complete Dog Food Bonus Size, 50 lbs.

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No 3 of the Most Popular Dog Food brands in America

Ol Roy Dog Food

Ol Roy Dog Food is the third best-selling most popular dog food.

Ol’ Roy is the store brand, or private label brand, of Walmart. It is not uncommon for large retail stores to sell their own private label brands that are produced for them by dog food companies. In this case, Ol’ Roy is manufactured by Doane Pet Food, which is owned by Mars pet food division. It is headquartered in Brentwood, Tennessee. Mars pet food also makes Pedigree and other brands. Mars is one of the biggest dog food manufacturers in the world, with headquarters in McLean, VA, and annual global sales of $11.8 billion in 2007. Mars acquired Doane Pet Care in 2006.

Ol’ Roy is named for Sam Walton’s bird dog, Ol’ Roy. According to The New York Times in a 2004 article, Ol’ Roy is the top-selling dog food in the United States annually by some 20 percent over the next nearest food, which is estimated to be Pedigree Dry Food for Dogs, with sales of almost 214,000 tons in 2003. Ol’ Roy dog food was created in 1983.

Private label brands like Ol’ Roy are lower-priced alternatives to name brand dog foods. According to the stores that sell them, they are similar to the name brands in terms of ingredients and quality. They can become popular because they are sold in the store for less, as is the case with Ol’ Roy. However, private label brands usually provide less information about the product than name brands. It can be hard to find out who makes the product, what the ingredients are, or other important information.* The source may only say, “Distributed by Walmart.” The only place you can buy such private label brands is in the store which commissions them. For example, you can only buy Ol’ Roy at Walmart.

The ingredients of Ol Roy Dog Food are about what you would expect:

1. Ground yellow corn
2. Meat and bone meal
3. Soybean meal
4. Chicken by-product meal
5. Wheat middlings
6. Animal fat (preserved with BHA and citric acid)

You'll note that this list is very similar to the best-selling Pedigree formula I reviewed, with soybean meal replacing corn gluten meal (both are low quality protein boosters; see my article on the Ten Dog Food Ingredients to Avoid for a description of soybean meal), and wheat middlings (a waste product and grain fraction with little nutritional value) added as an empty filler just before the generic fat source.
Minor ingredients include natural flavor, brewers rice (another grain fraction), standard vitamin and mineral supplements, one natural food color, and a bunch of artificial food colors suspected of causing a number of different health problems.
Ol' Roy dog food has a history of recalls, which is not surprising given the quality of the ingredients.

To Sum It All Up

Then again, this Ol' Roy Dog Food formula is really no worse than the Pedigree kibble below, and at least this one is really cheap. Of course that doesn't mean you should feed it to your dog.
Incredibly, this product's tag line is "Providing Your Dog with the Highest Quality Nutrition Possible." More evidence that there is no such thing as truth in advertising...

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No 2 of the Most Popular Dog Food brands in America

Iams Dog Food

Iams produces a tremendous range of products for all ages, sizes of dogs, and dogs with different health needs. They emphasize nutrition in their foods but many people who look at ingredients will balk at the corn and other grains used in them. Some of their foods are popular grocery store brands and others can be found in pet stores or bought online. The veterinary formulas have to be purchased through veterinarians.

Eukanuba is the sister company of Iams. Ingredients in the two foods can differ and Eukanuba is generally sold online or in pet stores but the two companies rely on the same nutritional research.

Main Ingredients in this Iams Dog Food:

1. Chicken by-product meal
2. Corn meal
3. Whole grain sorghum
4. Whole grain barley
5. Fish meal
6. Chicken

The first ingredient is chicken by-product meal. On the plus side, it's a named animal protein source. On the minus side, it's a waste product that doesn't contain any muscle meat and choice organs that are in demand by humans (e.g., livers, hearts, gizzards) are highly unlikely to be included either.

Next we have corn meal, ground whole grain sorghum, and ground whole grain barley. All three of these are whole grains, which is good. What's not good is that these three grains together most likely weigh more than the chicken by-product meal, making this a grain-based food.

The next ingredient is fish meal consisting of the dried, rendered tissue of whole fish or fish cuttings from unspecified fish species. This is a generic ingredient, most likely made from menhaden fish (a fish species used exclusively for fish meal and industrial applications).

It's important to know that fish meal is required by law to be preserved with ethoxyquin (a synthetic antioxidant suspected of causing cancer), but this preservative need not be listed on the dog food label since it is added by the fish meal supplier, and dog food manufacturers are required to list only the preservatives they've added themselves.

A few small companies making super premium foods have gone to the trouble of obtaining fish meal products from suppliers who possess a special permit allowing them to use an alternate (natural) preservative, but it is highly unlikely that a company requiring the volume of fish meal that Iams does has suppliers with such a permit, so this fish meal is almost certainly preserved with ethoxyquin.

Next up is chicken, which includes chicken meat and skin with or without bone, but no heads, feet, intestines, or feathers. This is a good ingredient, but it's 70-80% water (which will be lost during processing) and it's number 6 on the ingredient list, so the final product is not going to contain much chicken meat.

The Fat Source

The primary fat source is next and it's chicken fat, naturally preserved with vitamin E. This is a good fat source, rich in linoleic acid.
Everything following chicken fat is included only in small amounts: dried beet pulp, chicken flavor, dried egg product, potassium chloride, brewers dried yeast, salt, sodium hexametaphosphate (to reduce dental calculus formation), fructooligosaccharides (a prebiotic), fish oil (generic but naturally preserved source of omega-3 fatty acids), flax meal, dried chicken cartilage (natural source of chondroitin sulfate and glucosamine), plus vitamin and mineral supplements, and natural preservatives.
Note that while this product advertises its natural sources of glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate, the amounts are too low to be effective.

To Sum It Up

Iams Dog Food Premium Protection is a very definite step up from Pedigree with Chicken, Rice and Vegetables. In fact, it may seem unfair to lump Iams in with the other best-selling dog foods reviewed here, because it is clearly superior to them: There are no artificial colors or preservatives (at least none added by Iams), no grain fractions, no gluten or soybean meals, and fish meal and oil (sources of the important omega-3 fatty acids DHA and EPA that are completely lacking from the other four foods) are the only generic ingredients.

The problem is that this Iams Dog Food formula is so expensive that you could buy an entirely human-grade food with multiple quality meats as the main ingredients and no by-products whatsoever for significantly less than the price of this kibble!

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No 1 Most Popular Dog Food brand in America

Pedigree Dog Food

Pedigree is owned by Mars, Incorporated, a worldwide manufacturing concern probably best-known as a candy manufacturer. Mars has annual sales of some $30 billion and is headquartered in McClean, Virginia. They are entirely owned by the Mars family. Their pet care division is headquartered in Franklin, Tennessee. In addition to Pedigree, they also produce Nutro and Royal Canin pet foods, as well as a number of cat foods.

In the 1980s Pedigree marketed itself to dog breeders with an attractive ad campaign featuring breeders and their dogs. They sponsored lots of dog shows for many years, including the Westminster Kennel Club dog show. However, over the years the brand’s philosophy changed and they became oriented toward shelter dog owners. They cut their sponsorship of dog shows and their commercials featured shelter dogs at the expense of purebred dogs. There was a great deal of ill feeling from the dog show community when Pedigree featured sad shelter dogs in commercials on Westminster broadcasts and used the show as a way to raise money for shelter dogs without making any donations to purebred rescue groups. As a result, Pedigree created thePedigree Foundation which is said to make donations to shelters and to breed rescue groups. However, the Westminster Kennel Club changed sponsors for their show and chose Purina to replace Pedigree. Pedigree expressed astonishment.

The Main Ingredients

Foods using the word with in the product name, need to contain only 3% of the meat ingredients following that word.

And as it happens, the first three ingredients in this kibble aren't chicken, rice, or vegetables, but:

1. Ground whole corn
2. Meat and bone meal
3. Corn gluten meal

Corn has a bad reputation as a poorly digested allergen, and while it is indeed a common allergen, this is only because it is found in so many dog foods. The most common allergens are simply the most commonly used dog food ingredients.

As far as digestibility is concerned, the protein portion of corn is poorly digestible (even compared to most other grains), but the carbohydrate portion is readily digested provided the corn is adequately cooked. The main problem here is that corn is the first ingredient, making this a grain-based food, which is far from ideal for dogs.

The next ingredient is meat and bone meal, a generic meat meal that contains a lot of bone and can come from any animal, not just animals slaughtered for food. Meat and bone meal can include roadkill and euthanized animals and frequently contains 4-D Meats (meats from animals that were dead, dying, disabled, or diseased when they arrived at the slaughterhouse). As a protein source, it tends to be poorly digested with a low biological value.

Next up we have corn gluten meal. This is a waste product from the manufacturing of corn starch and corn syrup. The starch has been largely removed and so have most of the vitamins, leaving a feed-grade product that's about 70% protein. Corn gluten meal is typically used in livestock feed and as a cheap way of boosting the protein content of low-grade dog foods.

Ingredient number 4 is finally a chicken source, but it's chicken by-product meal. This is a rendered product consisting of chicken parts other than meat. Chicken by-product meal typically contains bones, intestines, heads, beaks, feet, and undeveloped eggs. It in no way resembles the chunks of chicken meat depicted on the bag.

Next is the fat source, and it's generic animal fat, which can be derived from any animal, not just those slaughtered for food (see above). To make matters worse, this animal fat is preserved with BHA and BHT, two synthetic antioxidants that are suspected carcinogens and have been banned for human use in many countries.

After The Fat - The Minor Ingredients

Anything listed after the first fat source is present only in very small amounts, typically comprising no more than 1% to 2% of the total product.
In this case, the minor ingredients include natural poultry flavor, wheat flour, chicken, rice, dried whole peas, wheat mill run, dried beet pulp, wheat gluten, salt, carrot powder, potassium chloride, vegetable oil (another generic fat source), plus vitamin and mineral supplements, caramel color (a natural dye) and plenty of artificial colors, some of which are common allergens as well as suspected carcinogens.

To Sum It All Up

As you can see, this Pedigree dog food with Chicken, Rice And Vegetables Dry Dog Food contains very little chicken, rice, and vegetables, and the carrots consist of carrot powder and appear after salt in the ingredient list!

This kibble is not the absolute worst, but it's up there.

It certainly has nothing to recommend it. The amazing thing is that you can actually buy the human-grade Whole Earth Farms kibbles (featuring chicken meal and turkey meal as the first two ingredients, plus whole grains, salmon oil for omega-3 fatty acids, small amounts of fresh duck, buffalo, and white fish, herbs, prebiotics, probiotics, chelated minerals, natural preservatives, and no waste products, generic ingredients, or artificial additives) for LESS than this Pedigree food.

And the excellent Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover's Soul kibbles (featuring four human-grade meats, two fresh and two in meal form, as the main ingredients) cost only a few dollars more.
The difference is that you're not paying for Pedigree's massive advertising and marketing budget!

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