How do you know what the main ingredient is in the food?

Question

How do you know how much of what is inside the food? You can read the ingredients, it may say things like deboned chicken but there is also stuff like chicken fat. I mean, for all I know it could be full of chicken fat with only a tiny bit of real chicken meat just enough so they can put it in the ingredients.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, like many things in life (even the food we're served!) you have to trust that you're being told the truth.



DogFoodProject.com is a great resource, as they have a list of ingredients to avoid, label information, and details on buying healthier products: http://www.dogfoodproject.com

If you're really concerned, your best bet may be to go organic. PetFlow.com has an excellent selection of organic pet food and lists all of the ingredients directly on the website, making it a little easier to compare products.

Answer 2

Yes there will be more by weight of the first ingredient. And it includes any water in the ingredient. Some of the things listed later may have more dry weight. As for much of what you read about dog food, it is mostly hype. Most of the sites such as dogfoodanalysis are highly biased, repeating fact free marketing hype that many swallow hook, line and sinker and parrot endlessly. Some of the stuff is urban legends. You will find no cites to respected journal articles there. The bottom line is that whatever the ingredients, the commercial dog foods exceed the AAFCO requirements for the essential ingredients. Nobody can look a list of ingredients and tell much about how good for a dog the food is. The highly rated foods are like a steak dinner, expensive, but no more nutritious than a tuna casserole.

Answer 3

As a dog owner of many dogs and alot of research, I have learned to read all the ingredients and the most one of all is the MEAL either chicken or beef. Go to Dog food analysis and check out the food you are looking for from A to Z there they have compaired the better foods and tell you what is the most ingredient the food contains.

Usually if it is Meal and it is first on the list, that is the most of the ingredient followed by the lesser.

Chicken fat is never the 1st ingredient, but dog foods need to add that along with vitimans.

Dogs need some fat in the diet but read the Protien and Fat levels also to determine if the dog is getting too much fat.

Again go to Dog food Analysis and check out the food you want to know more about and they have compaired all the foods that are generaly out in Pet Stores and they tell you how much meat, meal and fat are in the product.

Good luck

Answer 4

The first ingredient is *NOT* the most plentiful ingredient, it just means by weight it is the heaviest.



Again Amanda!!!!!

You can have chicken as your first ingredient, but have it wet and it's not actually the largest quantity.

Dog food labels can vary so much you need an interpreter. A meal has 300% more protein than deboned chicken, but can be listed AFTER deboned chicken because it doesn't weight as much.

Answer 5

Ingredients are listed according to what is the majority of ingredients. There is a contact for the food manufacturer on every bag and can of dog food and you can easily contact them and ask more questions. Whole Dog Journal prints a list of the best foods in their magazine every year. Nancy Kern is editor and rates the food after touring the plants and talking to the manufacturers so you can be assured of the information in the magazine.

There is a yahoogroup called K9Kitchen that is owned by Monica Segal a well-known figure in the canine nutrition world. Information on this group is reliable and easy to understand. What you will get on answers.com is a lot of hearsay, quesswork, and not a whole heck of a lot of factual information .

Answer 6

Well most of the time it would have a percentage next the ingredient in the food and so the one with the highest percentage is the main ingredient. There is really no way of finding out the exact details of the main ingredient, because as we all know the producers wouldn't want consumers finding that out as it could damage their sales and image.



Good luck!

Answer 7

Same as with people food;the first in the list is the main ingredient.The ingredient list is in descending order,from the most used to the least.

Answer 8

The ingredients are listed in order of the percentage they come in-highest first:)

Answer 9

That's the problem, you don't know.

And you don't know what rubbish is in there!



All commercial food is rubbish.

Do some research on it.

Can cause many health issues.



I have 3 dogs. All fed, raw.