Looking For A High Protein Dog Food? These 5 Label Rules Will Help

Looking For A High Protein Dog Food? These 5 Label Rules Will Help

Are you looking for a high protein dog food but you’re completely confused when you look at the label?

Then this article is for you!

Let’s face it, there are pet food companies who really want the best for your dog and there are pet food companies who only want what’s best for their bottom line. But the one thing pet food companies have in common is they all want your business – and they spend a lot of money on fancy labels and clever marketing to get it.

So you want your dog to eat a food with high quality protein (and you should, so good for you if you’ve read this far!). But you don’t want to spend a ton of time doing calculations and comparisons – and you don’t want to rely on the pet store employees to recommend a food (because who knows how qualified they are).

If this is you, then you need to know about the Pet Food Label Rules.

If you know these 5 simple ingredient rules, then you’re well on your way to choosing a better quality, high protein dog food.

The 5 Label Rules You Need To Know

Most pet sustenances are made to meet AAFCO (Association of American Feed Control Officials) necessities. AAFCO distributes least dietary prerequisites for pet nourishments and they advise pet sustenance producers how to meet those necessities so they can call their sustenance 100% finish and adjusted. 

AAFCO additionally gives careful consideration to the bundle the sustenance is kept in – particularly, they're occupied with what words can and can't be utilized, where the sort will be on the name and even how extensive or little the words can be. 

AAFCO additionally controls the words that are utilized to depict a nourishment and this will give you a smart thought of how much protein is entirely that sustenance. This is imperative in light of the fact that AAFCO doesn't require pet nourishment organizations to disclose to you the amount of a specific fixing is in the sustenance – it takes some favor math aptitudes to make sense of that, and still, at the end of the day, it's only a best figure. 

Be that as it may, AAFCO has managed certain names on pet nourishments – and pet sustenance organizations need to keep these standards to utilize these names on their names. Furthermore, these 5 rules are a decent approach to rapidly assess a pooch sustenance. 

So how about we get to the main control …

The 100% OR “All” Rule

The 100% Rule means a dog food is made up completely of that one ingredient – it can’t contain any other ingredient except water.

This bag of dog treats is 100% lamb – there are no other ingredients except water.

But this doesn’t mean that a Lamb Dog Food is 100% lamb – only foods that say “100% Lamb” or “All Lamb” are required to contain just that one ingredient. So that’s where the 95% Rule comes into play …

The 95% Rule

Pet nourishment makers began behaving in a dubious manner with the 100% manage and began naming their sustenances "Chicken Dog Food" when they didn't contain 100% chicken. So AAFCO made the 95% Rule, which requires that the creature fixings must be no less than 95% of the aggregate weight of the item. 

Presently there aren't a considerable measure of these super-high proteins available on the grounds that they're costly to make and they're costly to purchase … creature protein is truly costly! So sticking to the 95% Rule is truly costly. 

That is the reason AAFCO revealed the 25% Rule …

The 25%  Rule

The 25% Rule lets pet food companies name their food “chicken” or “beef” without adding a lot of these expensive ingredients. It’s also called the “Dinner” or “Entree” rule.

So the 25% Rule states that if a pet food is to be called “Dinner” “Entree” “Formula” or “Recipe” then the main ingredient needs to be at least 25% of the total ingredients. So “Select Beef Formula Dog Food” must contain at least 25% beef. Pretty straight forward, right?

But here’s where it gets tricky …

If it’s a dry diet and the first ingredient contains water (and ingredients like chicken and beef contain water), the rules don’t account for the water content.

In fact, the food could contain about 7% of that ingredient and still meet the 25% rule.

Let’s look at an example …

This food can be called Chicken Meal Feast because it contains at least 25% chicken by weight. But you’ll notice it’s called Chicken Meal Feast. That’s a significant little word.

Dry dog foods are about 10% moisture on average. But when the ingredients are added, some will contain moisture and some won’t.

Meat meals, such as chicken meal or beef meal, are dried when added to foods. So this food probably does contain at least 25% chicken.

But what if chicken was added as the primary ingredient instead of chicken meal?

Chicken is about 70% moisture by weight. So if 25% of the food ingredients is chicken, then by the time the food is dried, the chicken will have lost 70% of its weight.

So a “Chicken Formula” dog food could hypothetically be only 7% chicken.

Now this doesn’t mean that meals are better than meats – meals are rendered and highly processed, so their quality is often questionable. But I want you to understand the rules so that’s a topic for another time!

So let’s look at an example …

This Chicken Formula dog food requires at least 25% chicken by weight (not including water) to call itself “Formula.” But because chicken contains 70% moisture by weight, this food could actually contain only 7% chicken once the water is removed during processing – yet still call itself “Chicken Formula.” But this is still a fairly high quality food and it appears to contain a lot of chicken. There isn’t too much naughty going on here …

But there are many naughty ways to play with the 25% Rule.

Look at this food …

Now if you picked up a bag of this food, you’d probably assume that beef was the primary protein – it’s called “Beef Recipe” so it must be mainly beef, right?

If you look at the label, beef is the first ingredient. But if you look a little closer, you’ll see the second ingredient is chicken meal. Chicken meal is already dried while the beef will be 70% water by weight. So even if this company added twice as much beef as chicken, after processing and drying, there will be about half as much meat as chicken.

But because the rules don’t account for water, this chicken food can call itself beef (which is a more expensive protein). Which brings me to an interesting clause on the 25% Rule …

The 25% Rule can get even tricker … because the rules only apply to animal proteins.

So if a food is called “Lamb and Rice Dinner” then the lamb and rice together need to add up to 25%. And now AAFCO only requires 3% of each of these ingredients, including the lamb.

This is why most foods are called “Chicken and Rice Formula” or “Beef and Potatoes Recipe” – this allows them to legally bypass the 25% Rule and cut out more of the expensive animal proteins – but still give the consumer the illusion that the food contains a significant amount of a particular ingredient.

Let’s look at an example …

This bag of Chicken & Rice Formula food will sit on the shelf beside the Chicken and Chicken Meal foods, and consumers wouldn’t know that the chicken in that bag could be only about 10% of other Chicken Formula dog foods. But once the pet food company adds “and _____” to the name, the protein requirement goes from 25% to 3%.

And if that protein is meat and not meal, then it goes from 7% to 1% once the moisture is removed.

This also confusing when two animal proteins are listed, such as Chicken & Beef.

Let’s look at one last example …

This food is called Turkey, Brown Rice & Venison Recipe. So these three ingredients must add up to 25% of the total ingredients  – and each ingredient must be at least 3% of the recipe – before any moisture is removed.

This food clearly has a lot more turkey than the more expensive venison in it. In fact, venison is so low on the ingredient list, it only makes an appearance just before the natural chicken flavor. Once the water is removed from the venison, it’s doubtful this food contains much more than 1% of it.

Now because some pet food companies have found that 3% animal protein is too expensive, and they still want consumers to pay attention to whatever meat happens to appear in the food, AAFCO devised more rules.