What Your Pet Food Label Is Really Telling You

Host: Amy Castro
Guest: Dr. Angie Boyer, Founder of Grain & Grace Consulting

Summary

Pet food labels can make almost anything sound impressive, but understanding what those words actually mean is another story. In this episode, Dr. Angie Boyer helps break down a pet food package from front to back, including the AAFCO statement, guaranteed analysis, ingredient list, protein and fat sources, meals and byproducts, calories, fiber, feeding guidelines, and more.

The goal isn’t to find one perfect food. It’s to understand enough of the label to make a more informed decision based on your individual pet, your budget, and your real life.

Links

Pet Parent Hotline: https://www.petparenthotline.com/

Related Episode: Do Special Pet Diets Do What They Claim?
https://www.petparenthotline.com/special-pet-diets/

Recommended Resources

Additional pet food label and nutrition resources mentioned in this episode are available at: https://www.petparenthotline.com/blog/pet-food-labels-are-confusing-on-purpose-heres-where-to-look/

Affiliate Disclosure

Some links included in the show notes or accompanying resources may be affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of those links, The Pet Parent Hotline may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.

Veterinary Disclaimer

This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional veterinary advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Pet food and nutritional needs vary based on an individual animal’s age, health, medical conditions, lifestyle, and other factors.

Always consult your own veterinarian or another qualified veterinary professional before starting a new pet food, changing your pet’s current food, or making other significant changes to your pet’s diet.

Transcript Note

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability while preserving the meaning and conversational style of the recorded episode.

Chapters

00:00 What is your pet food label really telling you?
 03:25 Start with “complete and balanced” and the AAFCO statement
 05:13 Puppy food, life stages, and all-life-stages diets
 07:12 Pet food guilt, kibble shaming, and doing what works
 09:53 What words like “with” actually mean on the front of the bag
 14:17 Why “may support” is an important phrase to notice
 15:56 Comparing basic and premium pet foods
 18:26 What to look for in the ingredient list
 20:38 Meat vs. meal vs. byproducts
 26:25 Peas, pea protein, and plant-based protein sources
 28:48 Fat sources, rancidity, and preservatives
 32:23 Vitamins, minerals, and biological availability
 35:26 Calories, feeding guidelines, and your individual pet
 39:44 Moisture, fiber, treats, and total daily intake
 45:41 Where your pet food is produced
 48:01 Are there ingredients that should make you put the bag back?
 51:01 Choosing food based on your pet and your lifestyle
 52:59 Resources and the biggest takeaway

TRANSCRIPT

Amy Castro (00:00)
You pick up a bag of pet food and you see real chicken, high protein, complete and balanced. Maybe even a few superfoods are listed, and it all sounds really good. But what does any of it actually tell you about the food inside the bag?

Dr. Angie Boyer is back to help us decode our pet food labels from front to back so we can make smarter choices without needing a degree in animal nutrition. So stay tuned.

Amy Castro (00:27)
You’ve reached the Pet Parent Hotline, your lifeline to practical solutions for your toughest pet parenting challenges. I’m your host, Amy Castro, and I’m here to help you cut through the noise and turn expert advice into step-by-step strategies so you can stop chasing your tail and start enjoying life with pets again.

Amy Castro (00:50)
Choosing pet food shouldn’t require this much detective work. But between the claims on the front, percentages on the back, and an ingredients list filled with words most of us don’t recognize, it’s easy to feel completely overwhelmed.

Dr. Angie Boyer is back this week to help us make sense of it all. Angie is the founder of Grain & Grace Consulting and a trained multi-species nutritionist. After working in a variety of corporate roles, she created Grain & Grace Consulting to bring her knowledge and expertise directly to the animal nutrition industry and the animals it serves.

You may remember Angie from our August Pet Parent Power Up, where we broke down specialty foods for things like sensitive stomach, hairball control, urinary care, and other specific needs. If you missed that short episode, go back and give it a listen.

So today we’re taking a bag or can of pet food and working our way from the front of the package to the back. We’ll look at what complete and balanced means, how to interpret the guaranteed analysis, or GA, and ingredients list, and whether ingredients like meals and byproducts deserve the bad reputation that they’ve been given.

So, Angie, welcome back to the show.

Dr. Angie Boyer (01:53)
Thanks, Amy. Really happy to be here.

Amy Castro (01:55)
I am happy to have you here too because despite the excessive amount of research that I feel like I’ve done on my pets’ food, I feel like people will ask me, “What do you feed your pets?” It’s like, I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing now.

I feel like I’m constantly making myself crazy over reanalyzing and trying something new because there’s just so much information out there, and it’s hard to wade through what is the right thing for your pet. I don’t know if you get that, if you feel like that too or not, but ugh.

Dr. Angie Boyer (02:24)
Yeah, that is probably the most common question I get in airports or just in general conversations when people realize what it is that I do.

And honestly, the pace at which the pet food industry is moving, especially right now, I mean, you have to have your finger on the pulse to be able to truly understand what’s changed, why they’re saying this, and which direction they’re going in. So the confusion is definitely understandable.

Amy Castro (02:48)
I’m glad it’s not just me because I feel like I’m a relatively intelligent person, and I just get to the point where I’m overwhelmed with trying to filter through finding something that has this, doesn’t have this, doesn’t have that, has this. Sometimes it feels a little bit impossible.

So I wanted to try to do this from the standpoint of a consumer going shopping. I’m getting a new dog or whatever it might be, and I pull that bag or can off the shelf.

The first thing that grabs us is what they put right on the front of the bag. It says it’s all natural, it says it’s this. What would be some things that I should look at first as a consumer?

Dr. Angie Boyer (03:25)
The very first thing I tell people is the front of the package is great, but you really need to flip it over and there should be an AAFCO statement.

That should be the very first thing folks want to go and look for because this food is the only source of nutrients that the animal is getting. That AAFCO statement usually reads something along the lines of formulated to meet the nutrient requirements of such-and-such stage, adult, puppy, whatever stage it might be that you’re looking at.

To me, that’s the most important thing that I go in and look at because, one, are you for sure formulating it to meet the AAFCO requirements? And two, is it complete and balanced?

Amy Castro (04:08)
Okay. And is it possible, as I’m walking through a standard pet store, let’s say, that I would pull a dog food bag off that didn’t meet the standard?

Dr. Angie Boyer (04:16)
It would just simply not have an AAFCO statement.

For the most part, when it comes to dry kibble, there are few that are not meeting those nutrient requirements. But there are starting to be more and more fresh foods, raw foods, all of this variation starting to occur.

That AAFCO statement applies across the board regardless of what type of food you’re feeding. That’s where it starts to get really important. Maybe not so applicable in the kibble aisle, but if you’re feeding one of those other formats, you absolutely need to be looking for that AAFCO statement.

Amy Castro (04:50)
Okay, that’s good to know.

And just for people who aren’t familiar with what AAFCO is, it’s the Association of American Feed Control Officials. AAFCO doesn’t regulate or approve pet food, but it develops the nutritional standards and model labeling rules many states use.

And you mentioned the idea of whatever the food, like senior food, puppy food, whatever the case may be, there would be different standards for each, correct?

Dr. Angie Boyer (05:13)
Yes, absolutely.

For example, with puppy food, in the guaranteed analysis you are going to see an EPA/DHA requirement that absolutely needs to be in your puppy food. It is a required nutrient for brain and cognitive development that we don’t require to be in adult or senior food.

That would be a really good example of making sure that even if you’re feeding an all-life-stages food to your puppy, you need to make sure that EPA/DHA is in there because your puppy will absolutely need that nutrient.

This is a great example of why we follow AAFCO, because AAFCO helps set those standards of puppies need this, adults need this, large breed and so on.

That’s where it does start to become very important that if it’s complete and balanced puppy food, you know it’s going to be in there because they have that AAFCO statement. Whereas if it doesn’t have that AAFCO statement, they may not have that nutrient in there for them.

Amy Castro (06:12)
The all-life-stages thing always kind of confused me a little bit because I always felt like puppies should have specific puppy food.

Dr. Angie Boyer (06:23)
We really do recommend, to your point, if it’s a puppy that it is absolutely getting puppy food, or at least making sure it has all those nutrients in there if you are feeding an all-life-stages food.

I get a lot of conversations about all life stages. Some people think that it’s lazy. Some people think that it makes sense and it’s convenient.

I tell folks that when it comes to how you’re feeding your animals, it’s really about making sure that they’re getting all the nutrients they need to live a long and healthy life.

If feeding an all-life-stages food gets that, but it’s more convenient for you as the pet owner, it’s finding that balance. I don’t feel like there’s a right or a wrong. It’s: Are we meeting the animal’s nutrient requirements? That’s really what we need to be evaluating it off of.

Amy Castro (07:12)
Yeah. And I think that’s an excellent point because I know I have felt guilty in the past for some of the choices that I’ve made.

I think there’s a lot of shaming with what people choose to feed their pets and a lot of judgment. Somebody cooks for their dog every day versus I go grab a bag of whatever, and then there’s obviously everything in between.

But I’m glad that you made that point because at the end of this episode, what I want people to take away from this is: Do the best you can with what you’ve got to work with.

Whether it’s your pets, your budget, or whatever, just go into it with awareness and knowledge and do the best that you can.

I mean, I’ve tried it all. I’ve tried cooking and then buying the supplements that need to go in. It’s kind of like when I was going to use cloth diapers with my daughter because that was supposedly better. That literally lasted a day after her birth. I was like, no way in hell. No way in hell am I doing this.

Maybe I was lazy, right? But at some point you’ve got to know what your limits are, whether it’s financial, time, convenience, or whatever the case may be. So I appreciate you making that point.

Dr. Angie Boyer (08:21)
Honestly, the industry has never been at a point that it’s at right now where we are feeling that shame that you mentioned.

If you’re feeding kibble, how dare you when there are all these raw food and natural fresh food options? I’ve been in the industry going on almost 20 years, and I have never seen it. It’s almost like a witch hunt going after kibble at this point.

It’s so disturbing to me as a nutritionist because, in my opinion, kibble should always remain an option. Every person should be able to have a pet if they want one, and kibble is what makes it affordable and convenient and gives them the ability to have that pet.

Who are we as an industry to be judging pet parents on what it is that they’re feeding?

Our role is to provide nutritious food, regardless of the format, to create a better, longer, healthier life for that pet. It is not our job to be inserting our opinion into what form you should be feeding and saying if you don’t feed A, B, or C, you don’t deserve to have a pet.

Amy Castro (09:35)
I appreciate you saying that because I think that’s a message that both the judges and the judged need to hear along the way.

Okay, so back to the labels. We’re going to look for that AAFCO label, that it’s meeting the standards for the age or life cycle of my pet. What next?

Dr. Angie Boyer (09:53)
At that point I would go back to the front of the bag because I want to see what they’re calling out.

Is it more marketing? Is it more fluff? And is what they’re saying on the front matching what’s actually on the back?

This is where some key terms start to come in. For example, beef with bacon flavor or with ancient grains. Anytime you start to see the description of the food containing words like “with” or “contains,” there are certain rules around AAFCO that say how we name a product.

I want to call that out so consumers understand that “with bacon” doesn’t mean bacon is going to be one of the top ingredients.

When we use the word “with,” it’s a very specific definition of only needing to contain X percentage of that ingredient.

That’s important because a lot of times consumers may see “with ancient grains” or “with superfoods” and assume that they’re in there at a significant amount. They may be with certain companies, but that’s why it’s important to look at the back of the bag.

That rule from AAFCO allows a gray area of, “Well, we can label it ‘with’ and only put it in there at this amount,” versus if it was actually called chicken and superfood. That’s very different than chicken with.

Amy Castro (11:19)
Interesting.

Dr. Angie Boyer (11:21)
Yeah. It’s little caveats like that that I don’t think the consumer has quite been looped into when it comes to how we name products.

To me, it’s always important to look at the front of the bag and see, well, what did they name?

Amy Castro (11:34)
The front of the bag is kind of like a starting point. It’s like, that sounds interesting. That’s something that I’m looking for, that ingredient, whatever it might be, or doesn’t contain this, this, and this.

But then you’re still going back to the back of the label to identify how much.

It’s the same with reading human food labels. “With real fruit.” If it’s 2% real fruit, that’s different than it’s 100% fruit.

Dr. Angie Boyer (12:03)
Absolutely. And we’re seeing more and more with that on the protein side, not just human food but animal food as well.

High protein, but what kind of protein?

I literally just saw a great example the other day of a gummy for human food that was a high-protein gummy. We see these on the pet side as well.

When you flipped it over and looked, the protein was coming in through cellulose and gelatin. That’s missing one of the actual chemical compound structures we need for that protein to actually be biologically available protein.

So you can call it protein on your bag because it tested as such, but that product actually ended up being, I think, 25 grams of sugar and only 12 grams of protein per gummy, and most of that protein wasn’t even biologically available.

It’s really important to understand: Where is my protein even coming from, whether it be human or for your pet?

Amy Castro (12:59)
Biologically available is such a huge thing. It may have that in there, but if you’re basically peeing or pooping it all out, it doesn’t do you any good. You’re not getting the benefit of that.

It sounds like we have to be scientists to figure this all out. It’s already getting stressful for me.

Dr. Angie Boyer (13:16)
Big words like bioavailability are always like, okay, wait a second.

It really does take things into a biological, scientific type discussion. And to your point, consumers are not scientists. So why are we putting all of that accountability on them as the companies that are manufacturing this?

At what point do we just ensure we’re providing safe, efficacious, nutritious food for our animals?

Amy Castro (13:44)
Yeah. All right, so what would we want to look for next?

Can you give us an example and maybe we run through it? As if I’m the person looking at the back of the bag now and I’m drilling down on ingredients and percentages and protein levels, things like that, and what some of these words mean.

Because I think that “with” and “and,” as somebody that comes from a journalism background, that’s such a quibble right there. I could see many people assuming it’s the same thing, and we really have to understand what these labels are telling us.

Dr. Angie Boyer (14:17)
Absolutely. At what point do we as consumers have to put on a completely different hat to understand these labels?

The naming is important. And to your point, let’s continue to lean into some words because when you look at the front of the bag, you may see things called out like “may support gut health,” “may improve mobility.”

That word “may” is a key word that all marketing teams absolutely love because ultimately it’s a get-out-of-jail-free card in case it does not support joint mobility.

We’re not claiming that it’s going to by saying, “will improve joint mobility.” Very strong statement. Instead, we’re saying, “may support joint mobility.”

Right now this is really an area in the pet food industry where you have some folks that are really leaning into producing what I call these gray-area claims because it’s a marketing term and it helps sell products.

But you have another side of the industry that’s saying, at what point are we going to say that what’s in the bag does A, B, and C and we know for a fact that it does that?

Amy Castro (15:30)
Stand by that instead.

Dr. Angie Boyer (15:33)
Exactly.

That’s a key area that I tell people is kind of a litmus test. How honest is this food already being from the front of the package? Is it even worth me flipping it over, to an extent?

Because if they’re using all those words of “may this, may that,” you may want to move on to the next package.

Amy Castro (15:56)
To that point, it’s always shocking to me when I go into any pet food store, especially in the U.S., and there’s an entire aisle. A football field, maybe not really football-field length, but an entire aisle of dog food stacked four shelves high.

On the other side, the cans or other versions four stacks high. Maybe it continues on to another aisle, or there’s a refrigerator now with stuff.

How does somebody wade through that?

I know a lot of people are starting with price. “I can’t pay $80 for a bag of dog food, so I’m not even going to bother to look at that.”

But let’s say I’m trying to decide between two. Can you give us some ideas of what I might be seeing in those differences?

Dr. Angie Boyer (16:43)
I think that’s a good point because most companies do offer the ability for a consumer to hit any of those price points, that grocery, more basic standard versus those premium diets.

A great example is to pull out, what’s the difference between that more basic diet versus that premium?

When we flip that bag over, that’s where we’re really going to be able to start to dig into that.

The name gives us a clue, the marketing, the “mays,” the “withs,” all of that gives us an idea. But flipping it over is really where we start to get to the meat of what’s inside the bag.

The first area that I tell people to look at is one of the things we price dog food off of, and really any animal feed, which is protein. Protein is the most expensive ingredient that we can buy.

When you flip the package over and see a guaranteed analysis section that may contain 21% protein versus 26% protein, immediately your mind should say, I’m going to need to pay more for that 26% versus that 21%.

But it doesn’t mean that the dog isn’t still going to thrive on the 21%. Again, premium versus that more basic level.

Now, what’s my source of protein? That should really be the next question.

You’ve looked at that guaranteed analysis. Maybe you’ve compared that premium package with that basic one and realized, okay, I’m still comfortable with either one of these based off the guaranteed analysis numbers.

The next place I would move to would be the ingredient section, which really starts to list everything that’s inside that bag of dog food or cat food.

Amy Castro (18:17)
Yeah, and some things are words you’re going to know and some things it’s like, what the heck is that?

I know what chicken is, but I don’t know what the blah, blah, blah is.

Dr. Angie Boyer (18:26)
Absolutely.

For the most part, I think the rule of thumb that we’ve instilled in consumers is look at maybe the first handful of ingredients.

Will the first handful of ingredients give me an idea of the quality of my food? I get that question a lot.

From just a quick glance, it absolutely will give you an indication of what it is that you’re paying for, especially from a protein standpoint.

When we look at that ingredient list again, that premium versus basic package, in that basic formula it may not have the protein listed as the number one ingredient.

We’re starting to see fewer and fewer companies not doing this because they recognize that consumers are now aware of looking at those first handful.

But not everybody can afford real chicken as the number one ingredient. Some folks still need to buy that basic product for maybe a herd of farm dogs or something.

That number one ingredient may still be whole corn, it may be soy, it may be some sort of plant-based ingredient that’s bringing in a level of protein along with the meat, but the meat is not the number one ingredient.

Whereas in that premium package, what you’re going to see is meat listed 99.9% of the time. If you’re buying a premium food, it should be the number one ingredient.

It should be real meat.

And when I say real meat, we start to dig into a whole other level of expecting the consumer to understand all these ingredient definitions, which is just unrealistic.

Real meat versus dried meat versus a meal versus a byproduct. There are so many AAFCO definitions that it becomes even more confusing. Okay, I’ve got my top five ingredients, but I don’t even know what these say anymore.

Amy Castro (20:20)
Yeah, because the producers have caught on to the fact that we’re looking for what is that first ingredient, or like you said, the first five ingredients.

It’s chicken versus chicken byproduct versus chicken meal. Some people would say chicken is chicken, but there’s a difference.

Dr. Angie Boyer (20:38)
Yes, there absolutely is a difference.

Now we’ve created a whole other level of, well, is it human grade or is it pet grade? At the end of the day, I don’t think your dog cares, but your wallet is definitely going to determine the difference there.

Just from a high level, if we talk about the difference in what those protein definitions are, we have fresh proteins, which are just going to be on the label as beef, chicken.

Sometimes the front of the package will even say fresh or real. That is definitely an indicator that they are using some sort of what we consider a non-byproduct, non-meal-based protein.

It’s going to be more of that whole chicken or muscle-type meat. The definition of that is going to be clean flesh of a slaughtered mammal, the skeletal muscle.

You can already start to tell just by the first few words what that definition is going to look like.

Now we lean into meal. That’s what the ingredient says. It’s the same tissue, but it’s been rendered, cooked down, and processed differently.

There’s going to be removal of water and most of the fat. Then it’s going to be ground up, and what’s left is really concentrated into a protein source.

You can see how the production and manufacturing are really what’s driving some of the difference in these definitions, which again, why would we expect the consumer to know that?

Then we move into what the industry has started to, in some ways, convince the consumer is kind of a dirty word, which is byproduct.

I don’t necessarily feel as though all byproducts are these evil terms, but it does indicate a level of what kind of quality of meat you are putting in there.

A byproduct is going to be other non-muscle parts of the animal. That’s going to include things like maybe the kidneys, liver, maybe some blood. It’s going to include other components besides just the muscle tissue, still processed and concentrated down into a higher-protein-level product.

You can see how, from a price standpoint or from what you’re paying for on the shelf, we’re getting those price fluctuations.

Lastly, we still see what we call meat and bone meal in products as well, which is a protein source. This is tissue that does intentionally include bone.

The way it is processed, the bone becomes completely digestible as a calcium-phosphorus source, but it is part of that meat and bone meal.

You can see how that one, now including bone, would be more of that most basic standard price in some of those foods.

Amy Castro (23:28)
The way you put that, the first thing that pops into my mind is the fact that if my dog was living off the land, they’d be eating pretty much all of the chicken that it caught. Maybe not the feathers, but the other pieces.

It doesn’t sound as terrible as I think the way people make it seem. “Byproducts, it’s going to have all these horrible things in it.”

What I’ve heard about byproducts is it’s the stuff that fell on the floor, it’s beaks and toenails and things like that, so it’s not good for your dog, per se.

Is it really better to have the first one versus the last one?

Dr. Angie Boyer (24:05)
It’s more about what is the animal going to be getting out of each of these.

To your point, living out in the wild, the animal is consuming all of this stuff.

That’s where it’s kind of heartbreaking that the industry has villainized some of these things the way that they have and made pet parents feel this guilt and shame.

Meat and bone meal is not a dirty ingredient that we should never be feeding because we swept up all the scraps and put it into dog food.

If we weren’t able to feed something like meat and bone meal into some sort of animal diet, it would 100% be waste because humans aren’t consuming it.

That’s the one thing about the animal industry, whether it’s companion or livestock, that I think people forget. They are ultimately helping us become a sustainable country when it comes to our food source.

All those catchphrases of sustainable, green, recycling. That’s what byproducts allow us to do, use something that humans wouldn’t consume in animal diets so that there’s no waste.

Byproducts really aren’t as nasty as what people think. It’s just that word has been villainized so much.

Amy Castro (25:20)
Here’s what I find hysterical.

I’m in a shop the other day, a high-end shop in a high-end part of the country, let’s just say. I won’t name the town.

Amongst the treats that I had to choose from for my pet were chicken feet, tracheas, whatever. Those are byproducts.

I’m going to pay a premium price to give my pet, and I did not buy chicken feet, so don’t get all mad at me, but you’re paying a premium price for this chicken foot.

But you’re being villainized if you buy food that has that in there. There’s something very wrong with that. My dog’s going to eat that and enjoy it.

Dr. Angie Boyer (25:57)
That’s a great point.

You go down the bone aisle: here’s a pig ear, here’s a pig’s foot. All of those are byproducts that we’re giving to them. It’s just in a different form, so it becomes more acceptable.

The thought process behind consumer purchasing and companies and the way they’re formulating and producing, the psychology in itself could probably be several episodes for you.

Amy Castro (26:25)
One of the things that has caused a lot of confusion for me is that I have gotten it in my head that there are certain additional ingredients that are not good.

Just as an example, and this has just been my personal experience, I’ve found that when I feed young animals, because I run rescue and I’m feeding kittens and puppies, if I can find a food that doesn’t have corn in it, it seems to cause less diarrhea.

That’s totally anecdotal because that’s just my personal experience, although it is with lots of animals.

So I started trying to find foods with no corn. Then I read a thing about don’t feed food with peas. Now I’m looking for something that doesn’t have peas.

You’re creating this list of ingredients that you don’t want to see in your pet food, but what I’m finding is it’s almost impossible. If it doesn’t have one, it’s going to have the other. If it doesn’t have this, it’s going to have that.

What about the other ingredients that are in there beyond the proteins? Even peas are a protein source, right?

Dr. Angie Boyer (27:22)
Yeah, and that’s confusing. It’s so confusing because you start to say, what’s the difference between peas versus pea protein versus pea starch?

You’ll see all three of those in different products, or maybe even in the same one.

Pea protein, for example, would be a good indicator of where my protein source is coming from. Is meat one of those top one, two, three ingredients, or is pea protein?

If pea protein is, then your protein is more likely coming from plant-based proteins than it is from animal-based proteins.

That’s starting to become a whole other question for the industry of, can I feed my animal vegetarian, vegetable-based protein diets, or do I need mammalian-based protein diets?

Research has just started to come out where they’ve indicated that vegetarian-type diets are digestible and the animal is getting what they need, but those aren’t long-term studies.

That’s the next question for this industry to answer. They’re okay short term, but what happens if I feed a vegetarian-based protein diet for the animal’s entire life? We don’t yet have the answer to that question.

It is really important: Is it chicken or is it pea protein that’s fueling the protein of my diet?

Amy Castro (28:45)
Moving down the label, what else are we looking at?

Dr. Angie Boyer (28:48)
We start to get into some areas that I think are also really important in the fat.

It goes back to the same as protein. What’s my fat source? Is it a vegetable fat source? Is it a mammalian fat source? Is it being stabilized?

By that I mean, is it a stable form of fat that is not going to cause rancidity?

Whenever you open that bag of dog food and it smells like it’s spoiled, that is likely because your fat has oxidized and become rancid.

This is where we do use some stabilizers and some things to try to protect that fat stability.

People are starting to see things listed very far down on the label, like rosemary extract or tocopherols. Another big word where you’re like, what does that mean?

Those ultimately indicate that some form of stabilizer has been utilized in your fat.

That’s another key area where you want to know what you’re paying for. Am I paying for vegetable fats or am I paying for mammalian fats?

That should be a good indicator again of where am I looking on the shelf? Is it more of that basic grocery pricing, or is it more of that premium pricing where maybe it’s going to be a mammalian fat stabilized with rosemary extract?

It’s going to read very differently than sunflower oil with some other word where you’re like, that sounds scary. That’s probably not the one you’re going to lean toward if you’re trying to avoid what we call some of those villain-type ingredients.

Amy Castro (30:19)
It’s interesting you bring that up because the whole fat thing, I’ve always looked at those first few ingredients.

Then depending upon what pet I’m feeding, you talked before about protein that’s at 21% versus 26%, and 26% means it’s more protein and is probably going to be higher price.

But there are some animals where you don’t want to be feeding higher protein.

I think we’ve gotten it into our heads that the higher the protein, the better. But there are certain animals where higher protein can be harmful based on a health condition.

That’s one piece of it.

Then the fat, I’ve always just looked at the percentage if I’ve had a need to look at that percentage, but never even thought to connect it to what the source of the fat was.

I kind of always assumed it was coming from something meat-related.

So after I’ve looked at my fat percentage, now I’m looking at the ingredients and trying to figure out where that fat is coming from because it usually doesn’t say beef fat or chicken fat. Or does it? Am I missing that?

Dr. Angie Boyer (31:20)
That’s a great point.

If they are a transparent company, it should have the species in front of the fat source. Really, the species should be in front of any source that’s in there if they’re being transparent with you.

Meat and bone meal is a great example. It doesn’t say chicken meat and bone meal because it is truly just the byproducts of meat and bone meal.

Most of the time it’s going to be beef, but we still can’t guarantee that, which is why there’s not a species listed.

But with our fats, with our proteins, it should be indicated by the species. Lamb protein, lamb meal, chicken meal, chicken fat.

The one that we see the most is more than likely chicken fat, especially in those grocery basic-level diets, because chicken is extremely palatable.

We utilize it not only to help with the fat within the product, but chicken fat may be what’s coated on the outside to help drive some palatability, which is why your kibble may have a little bit of a greasiness to it.

Amy Castro (32:23)
Some of them are really greasy.

Okay. What about vitamins and minerals? What am I looking for there?

Dr. Angie Boyer (32:33)
That’s really down on that label as well and becomes a significant part of what the animal actually needs out of that bag of food.

How those vitamins and minerals are put in there, what forms and sources, are they actually available to the animal to utilize? That’s a really important part of that diet selection.

Amy Castro (32:53)
What should pet parents be looking at when it comes to vitamins and minerals?

Dr. Angie Boyer (32:57)
I think it goes back to a big scary word, and that’s biological availability.

We can put a ton of vitamins and minerals in the diet, but if that goes in the mouth and then out the back end, the animal got no benefit from it whatsoever.

What we really need to be looking at is making sure that these companies have used biologically available sources.

I’ll single in on one. We’ll use zinc, for example.

Most of the time you’re going to see a zinc sulfate or zinc oxide. Those are not as biologically available to the animal as a zinc proteinate or zinc amino acid chelate.

All these other words start to become much more biologically available than a sulfate or an oxide.

My advice to pet parents is just look at vitamins and minerals real quick, primarily the minerals.

A quick litmus-test indicator is: Are they using mixed sources? Is there a combination of sulfates and proteinates, oxides and chelates, or are they just straight sulfate oxide?

Because if they’re a straight sulfate-oxide type product, your animal really isn’t going to get much benefit from those minerals.

Amy Castro (34:10)
Taking that a step back, when I’m looking at the quality of these things, I’m still going back to knowing I’ve got to know first how much of these my pet needs.

Dr. Angie Boyer (34:20)
For the vitamins and minerals, we’ve really taken that responsibility away from the pet parent.

Amy Castro (34:26)
Thank God. It’s not one of the things I have to worry about. I don’t know how much zinc my dog needs in a day.

Dr. Angie Boyer (34:33)
If it says complete and balanced, you have the security of knowing the vitamin and mineral content is complete and balanced.

Amy Castro (34:41)
So you’re just looking for the quality and can your pet’s body process it.

Okay, that makes sense.

Just putting an umbrella over this whole thing, all of these things we’re looking at are specific to the needs of our individual pet.

I think that’s something pet parents really need to understand, whether it’s a conversation with your vet and/or your own research.

I’ve got a pet. It is this age. It has maybe these health conditions. Maybe I’ve got a pet that needs to slim down a little bit.

Now I’m looking at the label in light of that.

You can’t just take a general idea that the higher the protein, the lower the fat, whatever the fiber is, that that’s going to be the best food for my pet because it may not be, correct?

Dr. Angie Boyer (35:26)
That’s exactly right.

Right underneath that guaranteed analysis, we get a calorie content. That’s how many calories are in a cup of this food. That’s very similar to the way that we would evaluate calories for humans.

If it’s a really high-calorie diet, it’s probably high in fat. It’s probably got an extra level of protein in there.

To your point, that’s not necessarily going to be the food that you feed to a senior dog that’s not as active and that’s already having some weight-management and metabolism issues as they age and slow down.

Those high-protein, high-fat diets are really targeted for specific ages or groups of dogs. More puppy, or you’ll see a lot of these diets that are formulated for what we call our working dogs.

Our police dogs, military dogs, the ones that pull sleds in colder regions, those dogs are absolutely going to need a higher-protein, higher-fat content because they are working and actively burning it off.

My Labrador that sits inside, she’s active twice a day whenever I go outside and throw the ball for her. If I were to put her on a diet like that, she would become obese immediately.

Understanding what that calorie content is and how it’s associated with that guaranteed analysis is important.

But that calorie content is what’s driving our feeding guidelines.

That’s where we move into the next part of the label. How are we as a consumer knowing how they’ve come up with these feeding guidelines?

Why does this package say that my Great Dane only needs one and a half cups, but this package says my Great Dane needs three cups?

That is all driven by the metabolizable energy that is being pulled out of that calorie content in that package.

As the nutritionist behind the formulas, everything we put in the bag as the ingredients ultimately is determining what that metabolizable energy out of that diet is for that dog.

That’s what’s going to determine the feeding rate, or cat, or whatever animal it may be. That’s how we’re determining those feeding guidelines.

That’s why you may buy one dog food where you’re feeding two cups and the next time buy a different dog food and you’re feeding only one cup.

Take a look at the back of the packaging. That may help you indicate what the calorie differences are.

Amy Castro (37:42)
It’s funny you bring that up because I have never followed the label because it seems like it’s always way too much.

There’s no way I’m feeding my bulldog four cups of that higher-quality food. She’s going to explode if I give her that much food.

I’ve always kind of used the body condition.

Of course, that doesn’t help a new person because people will ask me when they adopt a pet, “The back of the bag or the can says to feed three cans a day.”

I’m like, holy crap, don’t feed that much. How is a person supposed to figure that out?

Dr. Angie Boyer (38:10)
To your point, it’s letting the animal help you decide where that sweet spot is.

The feeding guidelines are just that. They’re guidelines.

They are calculated based off what we know from a mathematical equation that AAFCO is telling us the animal needs this many calories per day. Calculated, okay, it’s this many cups of food.

There is science behind how we’re doing it.

But the animal will ultimately tell you. If I’m feeding too much, the animal is going to become bigger, overweight than what they should be.

If I’m feeding too little, you’re going to start to see that weight decrease.

That is a good indicator of letting your animal also help you decide what that sweet spot of feeding them is.

Because as we know, today most pet parents are feeding a ton of treats or a ton of other things in between.

All those calories add up just like they do in our diet throughout the day.

If you’re someone who knows you’re giving at least six treats a day and a supplement and you have an idea of what that calorie content is, then you should probably back off your food by X amount of calories.

Amy Castro (39:21)
Okay. That’s good to know for sure.

So getting back to the percentages, because I’m still thinking about the percentages. We’ve looked at protein, we’ve looked at fat.

There are also a lot of other things, moisture and other things, that are going to be listed on there.

How much am I paying attention to those? And is there a quality element to some of those other factors? I think fiber is also one of those things, or am I just thinking about my own food?

Dr. Angie Boyer (39:44)
Fiber is definitely in there.

Moisture is one of those that, for the most part, to me is more of an indicator of the form of food I’m feeding.

We should see that in kibble, 10% or less moisture because it’s dried food.

Whereas when you move over into canned food and into some of these fresh food diets, that moisture could be anywhere from 60% to 80%.

To me, moisture is more of an indication of the form of food. It doesn’t necessarily tell you much more beyond that. It’s a processing indicator.

But fiber is extremely important because, same as fat and protein, I want to know where the fiber is coming from.

I’m going to look and see, yes, it has 5%, 4% fiber, but more importantly, what are the ingredients that might be bringing in that fiber?

Is it coming in from something like beet pulp, which has gotten a really bad rap as being what we call a filler?

At the end of the day, we all need fiber.

Beet pulp, if it’s in there and it’s listed as the twelfth ingredient, who cares if it’s in the diet? It’s in there at such a small amount that it’s providing the level of fiber that it needs to be providing.

But what we’re starting to see is the utilization of other more easily digestible fiber sources, like pumpkin.

I love pumpkin. Every day I was giving my dog a scoop of pumpkin puree out of the can because the dog food that I was getting didn’t have that viable fiber source in it, but yet she loved the dog food.

As pet parents, when we start to understand where fiber can come from, then we also can start to ensure that we’re getting it into their diet perhaps in other ways.

I have one woman whose dog loves broccoli, so she feeds it steamed broccoli as its treat throughout the day.

It’s a great fiber source.

She probably doesn’t need to be going out and looking for a fiber content of 6%, 7%, 8% because she knows that the treat she’s giving is broccoli, which is a great fiber source.

A lot of times superfoods, ancient grains, things like that are going to be more easily digested fiber sources than something like beet pulp.

But it doesn’t mean beet pulp doesn’t still have a place in that more basic grocery-level diet as an affordable fiber source.

Amy Castro (42:02)
I think that is an excellent thing for people to pull out of what you just said, the idea of the other things that your pet is getting.

I think all of us really need to look at not just what am I putting down in that bowl in that intended meal I’m giving my pet, but over the course of a day, as I’m prepping my stir fry, did I toss those few pieces of broccoli? Did I give this carrot or a piece of apple or whatever it might be?

I don’t think you need to sit there with a calculator and calculate that like you would if you were on a diet.

But I think it’s important to understand the total intake for your pet.

When you go back to the overriding question of why we’re even bringing this up, yes, I wanted to talk about this because I think it’s important for people to know what’s going into their pet’s body.

But also, when you’re making these buying decisions, if I know I’m putting the pumpkin on, I know I’m doing this, then maybe I can get that bag of food for a little bit cheaper and that’s what’s within my budget.

Looking at it holistically as to what’s going into my pet’s mouth.

Dr. Angie Boyer (43:10)
I tell people, we as humans don’t like to track every calorie we’re eating, so we’re not necessarily going to do it for our animals.

But if you’re willing to at least have a high-level concept of what it is that you’re feeding, I think it’s important because, as we mentioned earlier, those feeding guidelines are based off the food being the only source of nutrition.

To your earlier point, how am I going to get four cups into this little animal when they’re not going to eat it?

It’s because that assumption is built into those four cups that the animal is getting absolutely nothing else.

For example, if you know as a pet parent that every day I give my dog a dental treat, that has become routine in a lot of homes. Every day they get some sort of dental treat.

And every day I give them four of X treats.

Just flip over the back of the treat bag. There’s also a calorie content on the treat bag.

That’s a real quick indication. Okay, four treats, we’ll just say they’re 50 calories. Four times 50 calories, that’s 200 calories.

That’s a lot.

Now, if you’re still feeding those four cups on top of those 200 calories, it’s probably only going to take about three to six weeks before your dog does start to increase in body condition score and you start to get an overweight animal.

If you know that out of routine you’re giving X number of treats every day, on average, maybe one day you give them six treats, one day you only give them two, that’s fine. But the average becomes four.

I think it is a good rule of thumb as pet parents that we have an idea of what that average caloric intake from other food sources is so we can adjust that kibble or wet food or whatever it is we’re feeding and not create that overweight animal.

Amy Castro (45:01)
One of the things that I’ve noticed, I have tried to switch, and I’m off that wagon for a little bit right now because I’ve been traveling.

Trying to feed everybody wet food, canned food instead of dry while you’re in an RV with six pets is not fun. It doesn’t smell good. It doesn’t make for good trash.

So I have gone back to feeding more kibble, which I was trying to ease off of just based on my own pets’ needs.

But one of the things I’ve noticed about some of the canned food is that there are certain ones that are very obviously coming from other countries.

I’ve gotten some that have come from New Zealand, as an example, for my cat.

How important is the country that it comes from?

Dr. Angie Boyer (45:41)
To me, the wet foods definitely stand out more, to your point.

We get a lot more variation of the country of origin as to where they’re produced. I see China, Thailand, New Zealand, and then there are some that are domestic U.S., Canada.

To me, it does matter. As a pet parent, I do want to know where it’s being produced.

On the back of all packages there is going to be that manufacturing information that’s going to indicate it.

A lot of times, if it’s produced in the USA, they like to fly that flag pretty big.

For the most part on canned food, what I find is that a lot of times it is kind of buried on the back of the label because they’re not flying that American flag.

I think it’s important because not every country follows the same rules and regulations that we do when it comes to manufacturing food.

Amy Castro (46:29)
That’s definitely something to research.

Some countries have better standards than we do for pet foods, how it’s produced, the sources of the meats, things like that.

It’s just a point for people to look at. Know where it comes from, and then maybe do your homework on what that country’s rules are.

Even though it would still have to meet a certain standard if it has that AAFCO label, I’d still want to know.

Dr. Angie Boyer (46:53)
That’s a great point because other countries do have different standards.

If you can tell that there’s a company that is also shipping their dog food to Europe, we know the EU guidelines are strict when it comes to getting products sold and accepted into their import distribution channels.

Again, that kind of starts to indicate the level and quality of food you might be getting based off where it may also be sold and whether it makes sense for me to buy it.

Amy Castro (47:23)
That’s a good idea to look for, for sure.

It’s like that with human food too. There are a lot of things that we allow to be eaten in the United States that are banned in Europe, and there are probably good reasons for that. We won’t go down that path.

But anyway, to kind of pull this together, we’ve been talking about what to look for, and we kind of alluded to the fact that there might be some ingredients that we wouldn’t want to see in our pets’ food.

Are there any things that you would say, okay, if you pull that bag or can and it has this thing in it, put it back on the shelf? Or is it not that cut and dried?

Dr. Angie Boyer (48:01)
It’s not always necessarily that cut and dried.

But there are companies at this point, your large brick-and-mortar pet food stores, that have what we call in the industry a villain ingredient list.

They’ve already released this information out to the pet food manufacturing company saying, “We don’t want products that contain this list of however many villain ingredients.”

We are getting that feedback direct from the distribution channels that consumers don’t want this, so we aren’t going to put it on our shelves.

That does help us then as nutritionists for these companies to know what we should or shouldn’t be putting in there.

Some of this, though, to your point, is following trends from the EU or following human trends, like what’s going on right now in the United States with synthetic dyes and colorings.

We’re just now seeing the banning of those starting to trickle into human food. The next place we’re going to start to see that trickle effect will be pet food.

You may not be able to go buy your green Milk-Bone anymore because that’s a synthetic color of green.

Today we do still utilize those in the pet food industry.

But me personally, I avoid synthetic dyes not just in my food, but I also avoid them in my pet food.

Those are things that I am looking for. Does it contain Yellow No. 5? Why would I want that in the pet food when the dog doesn’t care what color it is?

A couple of other ones are artificial preservatives.

For example, BHA, BHT. Those have a lot of negative connotations to them.

We don’t really utilize those to stabilize anymore. Going back to the earlier point, tocopherols and rosemary extract, natural preservatives, are now available that we don’t need to be using these artificial preservatives to stabilize our proteins and fats.

That would be a good example. If you did go look at your fat source and immediately saw in parentheses that it said BHA or BHT, you might want to move on to another source because they’re still using artificial preservatives.

Understanding artificial, synthetic versus natural in some of these is, again, kind of expecting you all to be scientists, which just really isn’t fair as consumers.

That’s why I have appreciated as a nutritionist the feedback I’m getting from these distributors saying, “We don’t want products with this list of villain ingredients.”

I know at this point I haven’t formulated food for probably a decade utilizing some of these ingredients because consumers don’t want it.

Amy Castro (50:37)
Yeah, definitely.

All right, so now my head’s actually starting to hurt because of this conversation. But luckily I can go back and re-listen to this episode to re-educate myself.

To pull this all together, any last words of advice or encouragement for pet parents who’ve listened to this and are feeling maybe a little bit overwhelmed at this point?

Dr. Angie Boyer (51:01)
What I have found when it comes to diets is that people are buying based off of specific meat.

To me, that’s where it starts to become: What’s driving your buying decision? What do you need?

Is it the convenience of the kibble? Is it that I need a sensitive diet because my dog has a sensitive stomach?

I think the need that’s driving the purchasing decision should be how you’re evaluating the back of the package.

If your dog doesn’t need the EPA/DHA, why would you even be looking at the puppy food that has that? You move on to the adult food.

Those are the types of decisions that I, as a pet parent, focus in on.

I need convenience. I travel similar to you. Ultimately, at this point, I know it’s going to be dry dog food, and it’s going to need to be a dry food that I can get anywhere in the United States.

Amy Castro (51:54)
That’s a good thing.

Dr. Angie Boyer (51:56)
Convenience and that distribution network really start to matter when you have people who work remote like you and I do and we’re traveling all over the country.

We need that convenience.

Whereas if I’m at home and all I do all day is cook because maybe that’s what I love to do, I’m probably going to have the time to cook for my dog.

It’s a very different lifestyle than the person who needs that kibble convenience.

Amy Castro (52:20)
Right. That’s a good point.

It’s finding that balance. You have to live a life that works for you, and you want to take good care of your pet.

So you find that balance of how you can meet both of your needs, not just one or the other, and do the best that you can within your budget.

If that changes, then maybe you can change or you can do some additional things.

But I think this conversation will really help people make informed decisions, and that was the whole point.

I know you have some resources that would be available for people, and we’re going to make those available on our website.

What other kinds of things can people look to to further educate themselves on this subject?

Dr. Angie Boyer (52:59)
I’m going to put some resources out there, but if you’re shopping in a store, ask them if they have a villain ingredient list or certain products that are banned.

Then you already know confidently, I don’t even need to be concerned about that because I already know that they’re not bringing in products that contain A, B, or C.

That’s a good way for you to take some of the burden off your shoulders and put it back onto the person that you’re buying the food from by asking them how they’re screening what products are coming into their store.

Really, for me, the biggest takeaway out of all of this that I want pet parents to walk away with understanding is that I wanted to be able to remove that layer of guilt and shame and just not knowing, am I making the right decision with what it is that I’m feeding and how I’m making the choice?

Whether it be kibble or meat and bone meal versus chicken meal, I really want people to not feel bad if they choose that grocery-level kibble and their next-door neighbor is cooking food for their dog every night.

It’s okay.

As long as they’re living a healthy life, getting all the nutrition that they need, it shouldn’t matter how that nutrition is getting to them, as long as they’re getting it.

Amy Castro (54:11)
And I think that’s a great note to end on.

So, Angie, thank you so much for being back on the show and really diving in deep on our pet food labels.

I know it was really helpful to me. I’ve at least got some food for thought and a little more knowledge.

So I thank you for educating me and educating all of us on what’s in the bag.

Dr. Angie Boyer (54:32)
Yes, thank you, Amy, so much for having me. I’ve really enjoyed it, and I hope that we get to connect again in the future.

Amy Castro (54:38)
Definitely.

And for everybody that’s listening, we’ll have resources on our website. I’ll put links in the show notes so that you can do a little bit more investigation on your own because all of this, as we know, is going to need to be customized to the needs of your own pets.

And I hope this conversation made pet food labels a little less intimidating. I know it has helped me a lot.

You don’t have to understand every scientific term or find one perfect food that checks every possible box.

Start with what your individual pet needs and look for a complete and balanced statement for the correct life stage. Then use the guaranteed analysis and ingredients list to understand what it is you’re actually paying for.

And if you missed our August Pet Parent Power Up episode about specialty diets, go back and listen to that episode.

Together these two conversations will give you a much clearer picture of how to choose a food that works for you, your pet, and your real life.

And as always, make sure you talk to your veterinarian before making any changes to your pet’s diet. This is a team effort, and everyone wants what’s best for our pets.

Thanks for listening to the Pet Parent Hotline. If you enjoyed the show, don’t keep it to yourself. Text a friend right now with a link and tell them, “I’ve got a show that you need to hear,” and ask them to let you know what they think.

And remember, your pet’s best life starts with you living yours.

So be sure to take good care of yourself this week and your pets.