"premium foods" continued... not so premium, but are called that...

[metalkat]

Now, the not so premium but still ok, these are middle of the ground foods:

Nutro Natural choice. I won’t list Nutro Max because it’s not as good, the plus side to Nutro is it comes in a Large Breed formula and it’s readily available at PetSmart and other pet supply stores. Ingredients for Nutro Natural Choice LARGE Breed Puppy:
Chicken Meal,

Comments

[alison_in_oh]

By-products don't concern me per se. By-products are offal, important nutrient-rich guts 'n' such.

I have a problem when by-products comprise the complete extent of meat protein content. They are not balanced to be eaten that way.

My complaints with Sci Die are: massive amounts of grain. Non-species-specific 'animal fat' which indicates a generic rendered product that could include any number of low-quality fats with poor fatty acid ratios, including road kill and euthanized pets. :( And perhaps most importantly, BHA, BHT and ethoxyquin which while their carcinogenic properties haven't been proven, are some very nasty chemicals with a whole slew of accusations against them.

BTW, did you get that Sci Die ingredient list recently? Because I seem to remember them caving to popular opinion and going with 'natural' instead of synthetic antioxidants some months ago.

actually...

[metalkat]

Actually no, in processed foods the byproducts are NOT the same as Offal... they don’t use intestines like most Offal uses, they use beaks, feet, feathers and the like. It’s just a filler. If you look into it (a little research) you’d be sickened to see what they add to the food.

The Science Diet List is what I pulled up just now, today, while digging up the others so it's as recent as I could have (having gotten it today).

Re: actually...

[alison_in_oh]

Poultry By-Product Meal consists of the ground, rendered, clean parts of the carcass of slaughtered poultry, such as necks, feet, undeveloped eggs, and intestines, exclusive of feathers, except in such amounts as might occur unavoidably in good processing practices.

Offal: the viscera and trimmings of a butchered animal removed in dressing

Research? or hearsay? It's important to really think critically about these things and not go with your gut reaction. "By-products? GROSS!" yet you feed green tripe and probably chicken necks to boot.

(I've been interested in dog nutrition since my girl was about 3; she's nearly 8. I've heard it all, gone through the shock-and-awe phase, and am into the calm acceptance/universal skepticism phase. :)

[azrien]

I asked the owner of the kennel I work for if she knew exactly what science diet had in it, and she said "only the best!" and I thought "okaaay yeah whatever..." and I tried to convince her it was bad, but no. So much for reading the labels.

Science diet is terrible.

As for Eukanuba, I feed Euk Kitten to my ferret, and it's actually really good as far as the ingredients go. The rest of the Euk line goes way downhill from there, though.