Being in a sport where what you fuel your dogs with is one of the most important factors in having a happy, healthy team, I am a bit ashamed to admit that I don't know a whole lot about the ingredients in today's dog foods.
I mean, I know that foods like Pedigree, Ol'Roy, and Science Diet are not good and foods like Taste of the Wild and Blue Buffalo are good but I don't exactly know why.

What are the ingredients that make the latter two good foods? What are the ingredients that make the other 3 less than desirable?

I think I feed a pretty good food, Redpaw 32k. It's highly recommended by many mushers, even some top Iditarod mushers so that's one of the main reasons I chose it. Plus, the first few ingredients weren't by-products.
But, other than that I don't necessarily know why it's a good food. All I have to go on is what other mushers have said about it and the results I've had with it in my own kennel.
I want to know the science, I guess you'd say, of why dogs do well on it.

And for another question...what's the purpose of beet pulp in dog food?

Can someone enlighten me on this subject? Have any links I should read? I'm open to anything!

I know just the very basics. Like I know Purina, one of the first ingredients is like corn or rice or something along those lines. Basically, even for people food, the first few ingredients are what mainly make up the food. A couple ingredients in and it's a bare minimum that's included in the recipe. Good dog foods have meat/meat meals listed as the first ingredients. Bad dog foods list me by-products or the first one or two things aren't meat at all. Dogs don't need all the filler stuff that's in the lower quality foods. They mainly just need meat.

For compare/contrast I'll put the first couple ingredients from a good food vs. a bad food. I got them off dogfoodadvisor.com which I'm sure took them directly from the bag.

So Acana. Good food. These are only a little less than half the ingredients in order: Ingredients: Chicken meal, steel-cut oats, deboned chicken, whole potato, peas, chicken fat, whole egg, deboned flounder, sun-cured alfalfa, chicken liver, herring oil, pea fiber, whole apples, whole pears, sweet potato, pumpkin, butternut squash.

Then there's Ol' Roy. Bad food. Even less than half the ingredients here but Ol' Roy also has significantly less ingredients: Ingredients: Ground yellow corn, meat and bone meal, soybean meal, poultry by-product meal, animal fat (preserved with BHA and citric acid), corn gluten meal, natural flavor, brewers rice, salt, potassium chloride.

Corn's first and makes up most of the food. Meat & bone meal is pretty open-ended. What kind of meat and bone? Probably the cheapest and undesirable parts butchers don't use. Basically this food has next to no meat. It has "meat and bone meal" and "poultry by-product meal" and that's it. Even as I go through the rest of the ingredients. Just in that bit of Acana I posted, there's 5 meat sources (well, four and an organ). I believe egg counts.

As far as the non-meat products, I base it off of what's good for us. Whole apples, pears, sweet potato, peas and all that are better for us than corn meal, rice, salt, fat, and "natural flavor."

There's also the debate on which grain products are better for dogs and which are pointless. I know oats are one of the good ones. I haven't dug too deep into that one.

Edit: If you want to play around with it, you can go to dogfoodadvisor.com and just click a random 5 star food, read through why they say each ingredient is good or bad, then do the same with like a 3 star and a 1 star. They really go in depth on each food.

I love how dogfoodadvisor.com list why things are good and why they are bad in the reviews, i have spent time doing the same thing, most resent with the new TOTW formula. if there are things listed that we know are bad for us why would they be good for our dogs?

I look at the ingredients (not just the first few) because what can happen is ingredient splitting. For example: Peas, pea protein, dehydrated peas are 3 "different" sources of peas. Same can be said with potato, russet potato, sweet potato, potato protein... are all still potato. And since the ingredients are "split" it doesn't seem as bad to have a few potatoes in the makeup as opposed to having it listed as the 2nd or 3rd (or even 1st) ingredient. While a brand can have a "lot" of meat based ingredients in the top... if the rest of the ingredients before a fat source (such as an oil or meat fat) are all carbs... You're going to have a carb heavy food which is something you DON'T want. Emailing manufactures you can get the carb % (because it isn't required to be on the bag with the nutritional analysis...) and go from there. Higher end kibbles can be 30-40% protein and have a 30-40% carb makeup!

calliegirl08 wrote:

Then there's Ol' Roy. Bad food. Even less than half the ingredients here but Ol' Roy also has significantly less ingredients: Ingredients: Ground yellow corn, meat and bone meal, soybean meal, poultry by-product meal, animal fat (preserved with BHA and citric acid), corn gluten meal, natural flavor, brewers rice, salt, potassium chloride.
.

Most of us started at that don't know squat about dog food when we 1st start with the dogs.

jbealer wrote:

I love how dogfoodadvisor.com list why things are good and why they are bad in the reviews,

I swear by dogfoodadvisor I love it. Every time I think of changing up dog foods I search it. Every time I see a dog food I havnt seen before I go home adn search it. I even search family and friends brands of dog food they feed their dogs and show them the results.

Me too! We have a great independent dog food store here, but I still do my own research on their suggestions. Doggies love the new Zero G! They also suggested Zignature.

BTW, "bone and meal meal" can also mean ground up pet carcasses from vets/shelters. Only the FDA in the US hasn't banned this practice yet. http://www.truthaboutpetfood.com/articles/aafcos-response-on-meat-and-bone-meal.html The type of meat should always be listed - e.g. salmon meal, venison meal, etc

Dakota was originally on natural Balance original ultra, it's what we got from the pet store ( yes i know now about pet store, i didn't then but it doeesn't make us love him less ) He was having such issues with diareha we switched him to Blue Buffalo Basics Turkey and Potato for puppies. After we got rid of the Giardia ( cause of the diarrea ) he was doing fine on it. After reading on here about the benefits of the Blue buffalo wilderness formula I've switched him to that. He loves it, He doesn't eat as much of it, but he can get what he needs nutritionally from it without having to eat large quantities.

I think alot of people are put off High quality dog kibbles b/c they think they are too expensive.
an 11lb bag of bbw is about $35 and lasts about 2 weeks. a 10.5lb bag of iams a lower grade dog food it ony $20.99. But i'll bet you will need to feed your dog twice as much of it for him to get the same nutritional value as you do with the BBW.

Remember those Total Cereal commercial... where the guy would bring out 10 bowls of the "other" cereal and say you'd have to eat this many bowls of this cereal to equal the nutriants found in one bowl of Total? lol I think it's like that.

ok i think i may have veared off topic lol

Thanks for your replies!

I totally forgot about the dogfoodadvisor and dogfoodanalysis websites. Thanks for reminding me! I've been doing a bunch of research on there, as well as other sites that were suggested to me.

haha Len, I fed Ol'Roy too a long time ago!