What’s in my dog’s bowl?

Canine Nutrition is, like a lot of things, a very complex and important subject. I’m just starting my own journey into this area of knowledge, but wanted to share with you some of my initial learning, as what I’ve learnt and discovered over the last few days has been shocking to say the least! In this blog post, I’m going to be talking about ultra-processed dog foods (UPFs), and how you can find out what exactly is in your dog’s bowl. Disclaimer: obviously I’m not an expert in this area, this is just me sharing some information I’ve learned and encouraging you to also go out and do some research!

To start with, I have a confession to make. Over the last few years, I’ve been feeding my dogs what could be described as ‘junk’. When we collected Crumbs and Moo from their fosterer, we were given some of their food and told the amounts, and given strict instructions on this as they were both extremely overweight and needed to continue losing this excess in their new home with us. We dutifully bought more of the same kibble (Hill’s Science Plan Perfect Weight), although we soon ditched the wet food they came with for something that we found better quality. No such thought went into their kibble though, and as they did lose the weight and keep it off, we thought that all seemed well. Fortunately the pair of them are robust little creatures, and haven’t had any major ill-effects on this kibble, but after attending an online lecture on UPFs presented by Butternut Box’s inhouse Vet Dr Ciara Clarke, I realised I needed to know more about what we were putting in their bowls every day.

I went to a resource I’ve been aware of for a while, but for some reason have never used - allaboutdogfood.co.uk, a website run by pet nutritionist David Jackson. Here, dog foods are given an overall rating based on their ingredients and a number of factors including the quality and source of those ingredients, proportion of those ingredients, bio-appropriatness of the ingredients, and many more. The rating also takes into account the processing methods utilised to make each food, and how this is likely to have impacted upon the ingredients and their subsequent quality in the end-product. It’s quite a handy resource, as you can automatically rank foods by highest score to lowest for instance, and filter them based on lots of different sub-categories to suit your needs, including age and breed type.

The highest rated dry foods on allaboutdogfood sit at around 84%. Hill’s Science Plan Perfect Weight came in at a terrifying 33%.

But why? Let’s take a closer look together.

Visiting the ingredients list of the Hill’s kibble immediately sheds some light - the first few ingredients are Wheat, Maize Gluten Meal, and Maize.

Here’s what David Jackson has to say about Wheat in dog food:

“Wheat is a common staple in many lower-grade dry dog foods as it is inexpensive and is ideal for forming biscuits and kibbles. It is, however, regularly linked with dietary intolerance in dogs which makes it a highly controversial ingredient.

In wheat intolerant dogs (also called celiacs), the gluten protein contained in the grain damages the lining of the small intestine and prevents it from absorbing parts of food that are important for staying healthy. Wheat intolerance can therefore lead to wide-ranging health problems most commonly affecting the skin, coat and digestive system.”

And here’s the information on Maize Gluten Meal:

“Maize gluten (sometimes called maize gluten meal, corn gluten or prairie meal) is a by-product of maize processing and can be used to top-up the protein levels of dog foods, usually as an alternative to more expensive meat-proteins. Unfortunately, maize gluten protein is not as easy for dogs to deal with as protein from meat sources and as a result it can lead to health issues like skin problems and hyperactivity. For this reason, we would recommend steering clear of maize gluten, especially with sensitive dogs.”

Nutritional chart for Hill’s Science Plan Perfect Weight via allaboutdogfood.co.uk

So right off the bat, two of the main ingredients of this kibble have been linked quite clearly to dietary issues in dogs. When we look at the nutritional chart for this food, the issues with this become even clearer - see the chart to the right.

The red section is representative of meat content, the green fruits and vegetables, the yellow unlabelled oils and fats, and then as we can see, the largest section of all is carbs, with ‘other’ forming the second largest part. That’s a lot of carbs and not a lot of meat or veggies! For comparison, here’s a look at one of the highest rated dry foods which provides a small-breed option, so would be suitable for my two Chihuahua X JRTs.

Nutritional chart for Orijen Small Breed via allaboutdogfood.co.uk

Scoring 84% overall, Orijen Small Breed starts their ingredient list with Raw Turkey, Fresh Chicken, Raw Quail, Raw Whole Hake, Raw Whole Herring, Raw Turkey Liver, Fresh Chicken Giblets, and Fresh Eggs. There’s no Wheat or Maize, with carbs and other fats coming in from a range of beans, leaves, and other veg. It’s a long old list, but the nutritional chart ends up looking a lot more appealing in comparison. Obviously there’s more to it than just this - you can view the typical analysis of each food in terms of their protein, fat, carb content etc., and the site also shows you where these numbers fall on average compared to other offerings, so you can easily see where one food may be performing better than others, or worse in some cases.

So immediately it’s quite easy to see why the quality of one food is a lot lower than the other, and to understand how this scoring system works. But a question you may have thought of already is why, then, is the highest scoring kibble only at 84%? The answer to this comes back round to this idea of ultra-processed foods, or UPFs.

UPFs are foods that have gone through a “multitude of sequences of processes”, which themselves include “several with no domestic equivalents, such as hydrogenation and hydrolysation, extrusion and moulding, and pre-processing for frying.” (Clarke, 2024). UPFs are attractive for companies as they are cheaper to make, have a longer shelf-life, and are convenient for the end-user. Unfortunately, UPFs have been linked to a lot of negative health effects, including increased risk of heart disease and cancer when studied in humans. There aren’t as many existing studies on the impacts of UPFs in dogs as of yet, but we are getting more being undertaken as things continue to change in the pet care industry.

But what does this have to do with looking at kibble / dry food and its quality? Ultimately, every type of dry food is Ultra-Processed. This is inescapable, as in order to create a dry, complete, long-lasting food, the ingredients need to be put through these industrial processes. So that may well explain why the highest scoring dry food can only achieve a score of 84%, despite it’s attractive ingredients list and nutritional chart!

There are different types of processing to take into consideration, some considered to be less damaging to the food’s nutritional qualities than others, and it’s worth having a look into these if you’re interested. The most common process utilised for making dry food is Extrusion, which is also one of the most intensive in terms of processing steps. This is the process used to create both types of kibble being looked at above. I personally am interested in a newer offering, Cold-Pressed dry food, which aims to preserve the nutrient quality of ingredients through this slightly gentler process, but so far unfortunately I’m struggling to find a size that would be appropriate for my dogs to try - both in terms of the individual pieces and the bag sizes!! For instance, one small and toy breed specific cold pressed kibble only sells 5kg bags, but has a shelf-life of 6 months. There’s no way my tiny dogs would be getting through a 5kg bag in that time! So for now, we may still be stuck with extruded products. That being said, I think it’s still good to take steps towards better quality dry food, despite it’s processing!

So, what does this mean for you? I’d encourage you to take a look at what you’re feeding your dog, and to think about their condition - do they have a lovely coat, good bowel movements, and good energy, or are they sometimes troubled with digestion issues, gas, lethargy, poor coat etc? If your dog is in good health then you may not need to start a whole deep-dive into what you’re feeding them and what to change, but any of these issues could easily be linked back to their food and so this could be an important starting point for you in terms of solving those problems for your pet.

There’s still so much more to it than just what I’ve covered in this post - we haven’t even talked about wet food and all the different forms that can take!! It all comes down to your own preferences and those of your dog. We’ve always fed our dogs a mixture of dry and wet food, and in fact something that I think is good to note is that the PDSA actually recommends this as a way to reduce the risk of GDV or Bloat in dogs:

“Feed several small meals through the day rather than one big one and feed a mixture of wet and dry food” (PDSA)

But again, not everyone chooses to do this, and you may feed your dog only wet food, which leads you down a whole separate route of research. Fortunately I’m happy with the quality of the wet food we’ve been feeding our dogs for the last few years, so I’ll leave things here for now and encourage you to go out and do your own research - allaboutdogfood is a great place to start, and there are resources there which take you through all of these different terms and give you lots of helpful information and advice to make your own choices.

I hope you’ve found this interesting, leave a comment below if so and let me know what you discover about your dog’s food!