Reading Pet Food Labels
What Do They Tell You About Nutrition and Balance?
What does your pet food label tell you about the quality of the food? Actually, not much at all. That label space contains some required information, but the rest is really marketing to you – as is much of the look and content of the bag. Label design, art and wording are designed to have maximum appeal to you, the pet owner.
Legally pet food manufacturers are governed by regulations on how ingredients must be listed. Ingredients must be in order of weight, including water. This means that ingredients with a higher water content – such as fresh meat – are going to be listed higher than similar volume of dry ingredients.
Per the clinical nutrition team at Tufts, “A [canned] diet with chicken (70 percent water) as the first ingredient may have less actual chicken as a diet with chicken meal (<10 percent moisture).” And, to make it even more confusing, ingredients from the same source can be broken down by component, such as chicken meat, chicken fat and chicken-by-product meal. All this complicates knowing how much of total chicken is in the food.
Now to help you interpret that label information better:
• Many ingredients, such as in some popular boutique foods, are to tempt owners, not pets. Additionally, the volume of said ingredients may only be the equivalent of a sprinkle rather that substantive. Kale and artichoke sound good, but they have no nutritional value-add to pet food. They do, however, often increase cost.
• “Human-grade” – there is no such thing in pet food. To be a food for humans, there are very tight federal requirements on all the ingredients as well as the final product along with their storage, processing and transportation. Once an ingredient is on its way into a pet food, it is considered no longer fit for human consumption. Lastly, from the Tufts nutritionists, “ingredients sourced from the human food chain are not necessarily any more nutritious, wholesome or safe than ingredients destined for pet food.”
• Instead of the ingredient list, make sure to read the nutritional adequacy statement. This tells you that a diet was tested for nutritional adequacy via feeding tests or formulation tests, as well as the life stage for which the diet is appropriate. Feeding trials are costly but are the best means of determining how well a population of pets does. Formulation testing, which is bench chemistry testing, ensures that the food is complete and balanced based by meeting minimum levels of required nutrients for life stage and not exceeding maximums. There are also diets that are not nutritionally complete and balanced and not meant to be fed as a long term diet – most commonly these are veterinary prescription diets to manage specific medical conditions.
• Vitamins, minerals and 100 percent natural claims – most vitamins and minerals going into pet foods (as well as people foods) – are synthetic but are required for healthy bodies and minds. Pet food companies can claim “natural with added vitamins, minerals and trace nutrients,” but take care to check the nutritional adequacy statement if you see all-natural or 100 percent natural claims.
To get ahead of the marketing language, make sure you read the nutritional adequacy statement first and use the ingredient list to look for anything that raises red flags about the diet not being balanced and nutritionally adequate.
Dr. Margot Vahrenwald is the owner of Park Hill Veterinary Medical Center at 2255 Oneida St. For more information, visit www.parkhillvet.com