Isn’t there a cheaper food I can give my pet? This was a questions posed to me recently by a new puppy owner. My first thought was why would you want to feed a cheap pet food? I think of the phrase – garbage in garbage out. A good quality food will make your pet healthier, happier and live longer. Now that we agreed to feed a high quality food I had to explain how to pick a quality pet food. Consumers must learn to look past the expensive ads and the attractive labeling; the important information is on the back of the bag, check the list of ingredients.

Look for:

• Whole, fresh meats or specific single source meats, chicken or chicken meal instead of poultry meal. The best is simply Beef, Lamb, Fish, Chicken, etc.
• Two whole meat sources in the first three ingredients.
• All grains and vegetables should be whole foods, of course organic is even better.

Avoid

• Fragments and by products of grains, like bran, flour and brewers. Especially those with several fragments of the same source like “rice flour, rice bran, brewer’s rice”. Avoid all corn and corn by-products.
• Non specific protein sources, like “animal fat, poultry meal, meat protein or animal protein”, you want to know the specific source.
• Meat by-products all together, never any “animal by-products”.
• Artificial preservatives (BHA, BHT), Artificial colors, Propylene glycol, or Sweeteners (corn syrup, sucrose, and ammoniated glycyrrhizin etc).
• The ingredient “digest”, you don’t even want to know what this could be.

A word of advice, you typically will not find these good quality foods at your large chain grocery store or the giant pet supply stores; you have to look to the smaller independent retailers.

Remember it’s all about the ingredients not the advertising.