So many of the dog foods available to us today try to lure you in by telling us about the great quality of the meat, grains, and vegetables they use. Can you believe them? To find out, you have to read the dog food ingredients list. But beware, they are tricky to navigate.

How do you know what is a healthy dog food though? In reality, what is healthy for one pet isn’t necessarily healthy for another. Certain dogs may have different levels of activity or be in different stages of their life. Others may have a food intolerance or be diabetic. Take all of these into consideration when determining the type of dog food best for your pet.

Figuring out the type of dog food will narrow your list of dog foods greatly. Now you need to determine which has the healthiest ingredients for your dog. The first ingredient that should be listed is a meat. And that is where is starts to get tricky. Meat, meal, by-product. Huh? What happened to just meat?

What is the difference between a Meat, Meal, and By-Product? An identified animal meat, chicken for example, means the clean flesh from a chicken. Meal is simply the ingredient that has be dehydrated and ground. So chicken meal is dehydrated, ground up chicken meat. By-product is what is left over after all the usable meat has been removed (like the neck, feet, intestines, etc.) Chicken by-product would be processed and ground up chicken necks, feet, and who really knows what else.

Do You Want an Animal Meat or an Animal Meat Meal? So let’s further confuse things now. You have two bags in front of you. The first one has lamb as the first ingredient. The second has lamb meal. Which is a better dog food, protein-wise? The one with lamb meal.

All dog food ingredients must be listed in order of weight. Since a meat still has all of its moisture, it will be heavier than a meat meal. To put it another way, take two pieces of meat that weigh the same. Now dehydrate one. Which one will weigh more – the meat will. The tricky part is that once the dog food is made, all meat is first processed and made into meat meal.

What Does An Unidentified Meat Mean? Any dog food that is worth it’s weight will have identifiable animal meats in it. For example, chicken, or lamb meal. But what if you see poultry? An animal class means that more than one type of animal in that class could be in the meat, such as geese, chicken, and/or turkey for the poultry class. The worst is when the manufacturer classifies his meat source as ‘meat’ or ‘meat meal’. This means it can be from any kind of animal.

The bottom line is that if a specific animal source cannot be identified, the dog food manufacturer is probably more concerned about their bottom line than the health and well-being of your pet.

There are many more factors to take into consideration when figuring out what is a healthy dog food for your dog. Learn more about how to read your dog food ingredients list at the Healthy Dog Food Blog: helping you figure out what makes a healthy dog food.

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  1. Dog Food Ingredients: Why Isn’t A Meat Just A Meat?
  2. Dog Food Ingredients: Where’s The Meat?
  3. Dog Food Ingredients Label – Do You Really Know What Is In Your Pet’s Food?
  4. Dog Food Ingredients: Why Isn’t A Meat Just A Meat?
  5. What Ingredients Are Used in Commercial Dog Food

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