Info on Beef-Based Dog Food

Beef is a popular main ingredient of dog foods of both the canned and dry variety. However, although it is generally a very good sign if meat is listed as a main component of the food, you should always be careful when choosing food for your dog, as naming and packaging can be misleading if you don't know what to look for. Be sure to check the ingredients list on the packaging, and be on the look-out for any low quality or controversial ingredients, as well as checking where exactly the meat comes on the list. By law, the manufacturer must list the ingredients in order of their weight – so for a food to be a good quality, truly meat-based product, you should be expecting to find the meat product(s) fairly near the top of that list.

 

A good example of what you should be looking for is Nutrapet Innova EVO Red Meat, which comes in both Large Bites and Small Bites versions. A quick glance at the ingredients list will show you that the first two ingredients (and therefore the main ones) are named meat products. Now, this is slightly deceptive in that the first product is given inclusive of water content, and that water content is about 80% - so if you were to take that out, you'd have to put the product much further down the list. In many dog foods, this would be problematic, as it could give the appearance of being high in meat content without actually being so.

However, this ingredient is immediately followed on the list by another meat product – a meat meal ingredient – and also contains smaller amounts of three other meat ingredients further down the list. This gives reassurance of the relatively high overall meat content of the food.

A plus point of this food is that it contains no grains – grains being an unnecessary and unnatural part of the diet, for a dog. Instead of being “filled out” with bulky and low quality ingredients, it provides an excellent level of nutrients – potatoes provide the major source of carbohydrates, there are plenty of fruits and vegetables present, and the range of vitamins and probiotics is very good. And another plus – instead of containing animal fat, this product uses herring oils and sunflower oils, both of which are excellent sources of Omega 3/6 EFAs.

Canidae Beef and Fish is another decent quality food, and appears to have a similarly high meat content – however, it does seem that fish rather than beef is the main meat ingredient. Like the Nutrapet Innova product, it contains a really good range of probiotics – and rather than fat, it contains canola oil. It is possibly slightly inferior to the Nutrapet Innova food mentioned, as it does seem to be quite heavy in grain, the rice bran being more of a grainy filler than a necessary or beneficial ingredient. On the whole, though, not a bad choice.

As an example of the lower quality beef-based dog foods, there's Rachael Ray Nutrish Beef and Brown Rice, which contains several low quality ingredients that are generally not advised for a healthy canine diet. Corn gluten meal, for example, is basically the parts remaining after all the nutritious parts have been taken away. Brewers rice is also a waste product, a very low quality grain. Beet pulp is controversial, as while some claim it is a good fiber source, others believe it can cause liver and kidney problems. Synthetic vitamin K is also thought to cause liver problems, and has actually been removed from many good quality dog foods. Also, note the presence of animal fat and soy products, both low quality ingredients.

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