What is best dry dog food on market?

Answer 1

BLUE BUFFALO! 100% I have been feeding my fullbred basset this food since he was a puppy and he is very healthy. This food is a little on the expensive side but the ingredients are all natural . The one I feed him has deboned lamb, peas, oatmeal, carrots, all kinds of good stuff :)

Answer 2

As recalls flourish and lawsuits against Purina and Blue Buffalo make headlines, Reviews.com decided to take matters into their own hands and find out which dog food formulas were most likely to be safe.

To complete this massive undertaking, 10 people on their team dedicated full-time work to this project, which started on March 16.

According to their research, they:

• Built a list of over 11,000 people with connections to the dog food industry and narrowed it down to the best.
• Over 20 experts contributed their valuable time to our work, including veterinarians, dog trainers, animal behaviorists, university researchers, and authors.
• Surveyed 300 dog owners and asked them if they knew what was in their dog's food.
• Gathered a list of over 8,000 search queries to find out what matters most to dog owners.
• Read and analyzed 72 of the most popular articles and studies on dog food.
• Compiled a list of 2219 formulas from 115 brands and reviewed their ingredients.

The first shocking revelation? 70 percent of the dog owners they surveyed did not know all the ingredients in their dogs' food.

Is it Really Safe?

First they looked at the safety of dog food - who is really regulating it?

Dog food standards are set by The Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO), the same people who regulate livestock feed. However, the FDA supposedly determines the quality - but their regulations clearly are not working - all the recalls and poisoned pets are a testament to that.

"Ingredients from rendering facilities, for instance, should be avoided. You'll recognize these ingredients on the label under generic terms like 'meat' and 'meat meal.' In California, they've given them the appetizing name of "dry rendered tankage." So why avoid them? It's almost impossible to tell what's being rendered: it can be road kill, zoo animals, and sometimes even spoiled meat from the grocery store that's still wrapped in plastic."

Is It Healthy?

Another component they looked at was if the ingredients were actually healthy for your dog. Just because they are not dangerous or toxic, does not mean it's healthy. A human could live on a diet of junk food, but eventually it would catch up to their health. Same is true for your dog.

"Digestive problems, including bloat and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), are symptomatic of poor ingredients that don't contain enough whole, unprocessed foods. Food Allergies can also lead to digestive issues - many of the experts we reached out to have seen evidence that dogs are sensitive to wheat and corn, both popular fillers." (reviews.com)

This image is a quick snapshot of common ingredients that are put in dog food that are healthy and unhealthy.

It is important to note that, just like us, each dog has individual nutritional needs based on health, exercise level, age, and any medical conditions. Many dog foods, for example, advertise they are the best because they are high in protein, however a high protein diet can actually cause issues for dogs with certain medical conditions.

"Protein is very important for your dog, but there are instances, such as old age or liver issues, where your dog should be on a lower-protein diet," says Dog Files creator Kenn Bell. "Make sure you have a conversation with your veterinarian."

Narrowing the Field

Reviews.com look at 2,219 dog food formulas from 115 brands with over 2,500 distinct ingredients and narrowed it down to 119 formula from 15 dog brands that were satisfactory.

Their criteria:

• We removed products where the first ingredient is not a meat of any kind.
• We removed products containing corn, soy, wheat, grain, or flour.
• We removed products containing beet pulp or sugar.
• We removed products that contained by-products or sauces.
• We reviewed brands for recalls, ingredient sources, history, and customer satisfaction.
• We reviewed the remaining formulas based on the best ratio of protein, fat, and carbs, as well as the source of protein.

It is important to note, they did no actual third party testing of the foods, to check ingredients.

"We did not do third party testing on the food because there were so many quality final choices," explains Mike Jelinek, co-founder Reviews.com. "We used ratios/ingredients from the company and then compared them with other third party sources to ensure the data lined up. Given the time it would take to test over 100 formulations, we didn't feel like we could pull that off in time. However, we plan to come back to this review in the future and look at reviewing the individual brands. At that time, it will make sense to go beyond the data/ingredients and get the products tested."

Then their researchers cut out any brands with recalls, unusually high numbers of customer complaints, had been sold to a large company, manufactured in countries that don't have strong food-quality regulations, known to have lesser-quality ingredients, or did not have enough available information.

That left them with the following 25 brands.

1. ACANA
2. Addiction
3. Annamaet
4. AvoDerm
5. Back to Basics
6. By Nature
7. Earthborn Holistic
8. Fromm
9. Grandma Lucy's
10. Hi-Tek Naturals
11. Horizon
12. K9 Natural
13. Lotuz
14. Nature's Logic
15. Orijen
16. Pinnacle
17. Precise Holistic Complete
18. Primal
19. Stella & Chewy's
20. Stewart
21. Stewart Pro-Treat
22. The Honest Kitchen
23. The Real Meat Company
24. Wysong
25. ZiwiPeak

For the complete list of the 119 dog food formulas, including a filtering search engine, check out the full article on Reviews.com

Answer 3

There aren`t but just a few out there. You want to look and make sure that meat is listed first,(not meat by-products)If real meat is listed first then make sure there aren`t any corn products or corn meal,no wheat and no soy.

Answer 4

They will eat any of them - once they're hungry enough. However, one helpful thing is that after they have condescended to eat a certain dry dog food, they rapidly come to think of it as "their" food and will begin to eat it eagerly at meal time - believe me. It only takes a week or so. But they may flatly refuse to eat it for a day or two. Relax, and resist the "doggy eyes" - they're trying to manipulate you. They'll eat it when they are done being in a snit - they aren't going to starve in the interim. The first owners of our dog, who had him for eight months, fed him table scraps. When we got him, he didn't eat for three days - because all I would offer him was a well-balanced dry dog food. Finally, he started to nibble at that. Next day he ate it all. In two weeks, his tail wagged a mile a minute when he heard it being poured in his bowl. He lived seventeen years.

Answer 5

form_title= Best Dry Dog Food form_header= Feed only the best to your dog. What is your dog's breed?*= _ [50] DO you want organic food?*= () Yes () No Does your dog have any food allergies?*= () Yes () No

Answer 6

kibbles and bits