Walk down a pet food aisle and almost every package looks wonderful. Beautiful cuts of beef, fresh chicken, blueberries, pumpkin and leafy green vegetables cover the bags, along with words like natural, premium, wholesome and limited ingredient. Almost every package is designed to make its food look like a wonderful choice for your dog.
But the front of the package is designed to get your attention. Turn it around, and that’s where the interesting information begins.
Learning a few label-reading tricks can help you pick up almost any dog food, topper or treat and understand much more about what is actually inside. The important thing to remember is that an ingredient label gives us valuable clues, but it doesn’t tell us the entire story.
Here’s what to look for.
First: What Kind of Product Is This?
Before you even get to the ingredients, determine what the product is intended to do. Is it your dog’s primary food? A topper? A treat? A chew? A supplement?
A food intended to provide a dog’s primary diet will generally be formulated to provide a broad range of nutrients for its intended life stage. Treats, toppers and supplemental foods may have an entirely different purpose, and that’s perfectly okay.
A sardine doesn’t contain every nutrient your dog needs. Neither does a chicken heart used as a training treat, and pumpkin isn’t a complete diet. Each can still contribute something valuable as part of a larger, varied diet.
So don’t judge every product by whether it could feed your dog by itself. Instead, ask what job that particular food is supposed to do.
How Much of Each Ingredient Is Actually in There?
This is one of the questions we’re asked most often, and unfortunately, the ingredient panel usually doesn’t give us exact percentages.
Ingredients are generally listed in descending order according to their weight when they are added to the recipe. So if the label says:
Chicken, oats, chicken meal, peas, chicken fat...
there was more chicken by weight than oats when those ingredients were added, more oats than chicken meal, and so forth.
There is an important catch, though: water weighs a lot. Fresh chicken naturally contains a substantial amount of moisture, while chicken meal has already had much of its moisture removed. Fresh chicken can therefore appear first because of its water weight, while chicken meal farther down the list may actually contribute a significant amount of concentrated animal protein to the finished food.
That’s why we don’t judge a food simply by asking whether meat is the first ingredient. Look at the first five or six ingredients together. They usually give you a much better picture of what makes up the bulk of the food.
What Is a Meat Meal?
“Meal” has gotten a bad reputation in pet food marketing, but a meal isn’t automatically a poor-quality ingredient. Chicken meal, for example, is an animal ingredient that has been rendered, with much of the water and fat removed. What remains is concentrated and protein-rich, which can make a named meat meal a useful ingredient in dry food.
What we pay attention to is how specifically the ingredient is identified. Compare chicken meal, turkey meal and beef meal with broader descriptions such as poultry meal or meat meal. The first three tell us the animal species, while “poultry” provides less information and “meat” provides less still.
The same idea applies to fats and oils. Chicken fat tells us more than animal fat, and salmon oil tells us more than fish oil. In general, we appreciate ingredients that tell us exactly what we’re feeding.
What About By-Products?
Here is another ingredient category that can sound worse than it really is. Dogs don’t need to live on chicken breast and steak, and some of the animal tissues humans may think of as by-products can be incredibly nutrient-rich.
Liver, heart and other animal tissues can provide valuable vitamins, minerals, amino acids and other nutrients. The word by-product by itself, therefore, doesn’t tell us whether an ingredient is nutritious or poor quality.
Once again, specificity and sourcing matter. There is a big difference between knowing which animal and tissues are being used and simply seeing a vague animal-derived ingredient on a label.
Can You Tell the Quality of the Meat From the Label?
Only to a point. Clearly identified animal ingredients such as beef, beef liver, turkey heart, chicken meal or salmon oil give us useful information, but the ingredient list cannot tell us everything about their quality.
For example, the label usually cannot tell you:
- How fresh the meat was
- Where the animal was raised
- How the ingredient was handled before manufacturing
- How much connective tissue it contained
- How digestible the finished ingredient is
- How extensively it was processed
- How well nutrients survived processing
Two foods can have very similar ingredient panels and use ingredients of very different quality. This is why knowing something about the company matters too.
Where do they source their ingredients? Where is the food made? Do they manufacture it themselves or hire another company to make it? What control do they have over sourcing and processing? What testing do they perform?
Sometimes the answers to those questions tell us more than another ten minutes spent studying the ingredient list.
Watch for Ingredient Splitting
Ingredient splitting is another useful concept to understand. Imagine seeing an ingredient list that begins:
Chicken, peas, lentils, pea protein, pea starch, pea fiber...
Because peas, pea protein, pea starch and pea fiber are separate ingredients, each gets its own place on the ingredient list. If we mentally put all of those pea-derived ingredients together, we may get a very different impression of how much of the formula is actually coming from peas.
This doesn’t necessarily mean a manufacturer is trying to deceive you. Pea protein, starch and fiber can perform different nutritional or manufacturing functions. It does mean, however, that we should learn to look at related ingredients collectively.
You may see the same thing with different forms of rice, corn, potatoes, lentils and other ingredients.
Instead of asking only, “What’s the first ingredient?” a better question is, “What appears to make up most of this food?”
Find the Salt
This is one of our favorite label-reading tricks because you can use it right in the pet food aisle. Find salt in the ingredient list and use it as a landmark.
Salt is normally used in relatively small quantities, so ingredients appearing after it are generally minor ingredients rather than major components of the recipe. You’ll sometimes hear this called the salt divider.
Consider this imaginary ingredient list:
Chicken, oats, barley, chicken fat, pumpkin, salt, blueberries, spinach, cranberries, rosemary...
The front of the bag might be covered with beautiful pictures of chicken, blueberries, spinach and cranberries. Those ingredients really are in the food, but the ingredient list gives us some perspective. Chicken is a major ingredient, while the blueberries, spinach and cranberries appearing after salt are likely present in relatively small amounts.
That doesn’t make those ingredients worthless. Small quantities may still contribute flavor, nutrients, antioxidants or another useful function. It simply means that a blueberry pictured prominently on the front of the bag isn’t necessarily a major source of nutrition inside it.
Think of salt as a landmark rather than an exact measuring line. The ingredient panel doesn’t tell us the exact percentage of salt, so we can’t calculate an exact percentage for everything below it. It does give us a useful clue that we’re getting into the smaller ingredients in the recipe.
The Name on the Front Can Give You Clues Too
The actual product name can tell us more than many shoppers realize. Under U.S. pet food naming rules, the wording used around a featured ingredient can indicate whether that ingredient represents a substantial part of the product or only a relatively small amount.
For example, these names are not interchangeable:
- Beef Dog Food — generally indicates that beef makes up a very substantial portion of the product.
- Beef Dinner, Beef Recipe or Beef Entrée — generally falls into a lower percentage category.
- Dog Food with Beef — may contain only a small percentage of beef.
- Beef Flavor Dog Food — is primarily making a flavor claim and does not mean beef makes up a significant portion of the food.
The exact rules become more complicated when multiple named ingredients and added water are involved, but the practical lesson is simple: “beef,” “with beef” and “beef flavor” are not saying the same thing.
Don’t just look at the picture of the steak. Read the words surrounding it.
Why Are There So Many Chemical-Sounding Ingredients?
Toward the end of many pet food labels, you’ll find names such as zinc proteinate, copper sulfate, manganese proteinate, thiamine mononitrate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, cholecalciferol and folic acid. That can look intimidating if you don’t know what those ingredients are doing.
Many are simply sources of essential vitamins and minerals. Cholecalciferol, for example, supplies vitamin D3, while thiamine mononitrate supplies vitamin B1. Different forms of zinc can be added to provide the zinc the dog needs.
A long or difficult-to-pronounce name doesn’t automatically mean an ingredient is harmful or undesirable. A much more useful question is: Why is it there?
Understanding the Vitamin and Mineral Premix
Many commercial foods contain what is commonly called a vitamin and mineral premix. Think of it as one method of filling nutritional gaps and helping keep the nutrient content of the finished food consistent.
The primary ingredients provide protein, fat and many naturally occurring vitamins and minerals. Additional nutrients may then be included to provide nutrients that are low in those ingredients, compensate for some nutrients lost during processing and storage, and make the finished recipe more nutritionally consistent.
Sometimes manufacturers purchase a prepared vitamin and mineral blend, while others add individual nutrients separately. The nutrients themselves can have many origins. They may be produced through fermentation, mineral refinement, extraction or synthesis, and minerals may be supplied in several different forms.
The ingredient panel usually doesn’t tell you the complete sourcing story. If nutrient sourcing is important to you, asking the manufacturer where its vitamin and mineral ingredients come from can be much more informative than studying the ingredient list alone.
The presence of a vitamin premix doesn’t automatically make a food poor quality. It tells you something about how the manufacturer chose to formulate the food.
Why Don’t Some Foods Have a Vitamin Premix?
There is another way to approach formulation because whole foods themselves contain vitamins and minerals. Muscle meat provides certain nutrients, organs provide others, and bone or another calcium source contributes important minerals. Eggs, fish, shellfish, seeds and carefully chosen plant ingredients can fill additional nutritional roles.
A thoughtfully constructed diet may therefore rely more heavily on nutrients coming from the foods themselves rather than from a long list of added vitamins and minerals. This is one reason some fresh and raw foods have surprisingly short ingredient lists.
But a short ingredient list isn’t proof that a food provides everything a dog needs, just as a long vitamin list isn’t proof that a food is inferior. “No added synthetic vitamins and minerals” tells us something about how a food was formulated, while “complete and balanced” describes what the finished food is intended to provide. Those are different questions.
We also don’t believe every bite that goes into a dog’s mouth has to provide every nutrient in perfect proportion. Thoughtful variety can play an important role in how we feed our dogs, so it makes sense to consider the diet as a whole rather than evaluating every individual food in isolation.
Why Are Preservatives Added?
The word preservative can sound negative, but food preservation has an important job. Fats oxidize and can become rancid, while molds and microorganisms can grow when conditions allow it. Different types of foods therefore require different methods of staying fresh and stable.
You might see ingredients such as mixed tocopherols, rosemary extract, citric acid, ascorbic acid or potassium sorbate. Mixed tocopherols, for example, are forms of vitamin E commonly used to help protect fats from oxidation.
Fresh and frozen foods can use refrigeration or freezing as an important part of their preservation system, while shelf-stable products have different challenges. Rather than automatically thinking “preservative equals bad,” ask what is being preserved, why the preservative is needed and how the particular food is kept fresh.
Don’t Let the Front of the Package Do All the Talking
Pet food packages are full of appealing words such as premium, holistic, natural, grain-free, superfood, ancient grainsand limited ingredient. Some label terms have specific requirements attached to them, while others tell us surprisingly little about the actual nutritional quality of the food.
Even a meaningful claim shouldn’t be considered in isolation. Grain-free tells you that the food doesn’t contain grain, but it doesn’t tell you whether the ingredients replacing those grains are a better choice for your dog. Natural doesn’t automatically mean more nutritious, and limited ingredient doesn’t necessarily tell you the quality of those ingredients.
A picture of a steak surrounded by blueberries and spinach certainly doesn’t tell you how much of each ingredient is actually inside the bag. Turn it over and see what the rest of the label tells you.
Look at the Guaranteed Analysis Too
The ingredient panel tells you what ingredients were used, while the Guaranteed Analysis tells you something different. You’ll commonly find minimum amounts of crude protein and crude fat along with maximum amounts of crude fiber and moisture.
The word crude doesn’t mean poor quality. It is terminology associated with how these broad nutrient categories are measured.
There is one big complication when comparing foods: water. A raw food, canned food and kibble may contain dramatically different amounts of moisture, which means the percentages printed on their labels cannot always be compared directly.
For example, suppose a canned or raw food contains 10% protein and 75% moisture. That leaves 25% dry matter. To estimate protein on a dry-matter basis:
10 ÷ 25 × 100 = 40% protein on a dry-matter basis.
Suddenly, that 10% protein doesn’t look very low. When comparing foods with very different moisture levels, converting the nutrients to a dry-matter basis gives you a much more useful comparison.
Don’t Forget the Calories
Calories become particularly important when reading treat and topper labels. Two tiny training treats may look almost identical but contain very different numbers of calories, and when “just one little treat” happens 30 or 40 times during a day of training, those calories can add up quickly.
Look for calorie information expressed as kcal. For food, you may see calories per cup, can, package or kilogram. For treats, look for calories per treat or piece when provided.
The ingredient list tells you what the treat is made from. The calorie statement helps you understand how much of it you’re actually feeding.
Treats and Toppers Deserve Label Reading Too
Sometimes we’re very careful about choosing our dog’s primary food and then forget to turn over the treat bag. The same label-reading skills apply to everything we add to the bowl or hand out during the day.
Imagine a bag of Blueberry & Pumpkin Bites covered with pictures of blueberries and pumpkin. Turn it over and perhaps the first several ingredients are flour, glycerin, starch and molasses, while pumpkin and blueberries appear after salt. That doesn’t automatically make it a terrible treat, but it does tell you that pumpkin and blueberries probably aren’t what make up most of it.
Now consider a bag of Beef Liver Treats with one ingredient: beef liver. There isn’t much detective work required.
The same principle applies to toppers. A topper might contain beef broth, beef, beef liver, pumpkin and carrots. Another may feature beef prominently on the front while water, starches or gums make up much of the product.
We aren’t simply looking for “good” and “bad.” We’re trying to understand what we’re actually buying and what role we want it to play in our dog’s diet.
The Ingredient List Isn’t a Good Food/Bad Food List
Perhaps this is the most important lesson in the entire guide. It’s tempting to turn ingredient reading into a game of finding ingredients to avoid, but we don’t think that’s particularly helpful.
Chicken meal isn’t automatically bad. A vitamin premix isn’t automatically bad. A preservative isn’t automatically bad. A food isn’t automatically wonderful because blueberries appear on the label, and an ingredient you can’t pronounce isn’t automatically something you should fear.
The goal is to learn what ingredients mean, understand why they are there and ask better questions about the food as a whole.
The 60-Second Dog Food Label Check
Standing in the store comparing two foods, toppers or treats? Turn the package over and work through these questions.
1. What is this product supposed to do?
Is it a primary food, topper, treat, chew or supplement? Not everything your dog eats needs to be a complete diet; it needs to make sense as part of the whole diet.
2. What makes up most of it?
Don’t stop at the first ingredient. Look at the first five or six together to get a better picture of what makes up the product.
3. Are the animal ingredients clearly named?
Specificity gives you more information. Beef tells you more than meat, chicken meal tells you more than poultry meal, and salmon oil tells you more than fish oil.
4. Look for ingredient splitting.
Do you see peas, pea protein, pea starch and pea fiber? Or several forms of rice, corn, potatoes or lentils? Consider related ingredients together rather than looking only at where each appears individually.
5. Find the salt.
Use salt as a landmark. Ingredients appearing after it are generally present in relatively small amounts. Check whether the blueberries, spinach, pumpkin or other ingredients advertised prominently on the front appear before or after it.
6. Read the product name carefully.
Beef Dog Food, Beef Recipe, Dog Food with Beef and Beef Flavor do not necessarily mean the same thing. Pay attention to the words surrounding the featured ingredient.
7. Check the Guaranteed Analysis.
Look at protein, fat, fiber and moisture. If you’re comparing a high-moisture raw or canned food with dry kibble, remember that the printed percentages aren’t directly comparable without accounting for the water.
8. Check the calories.
This is especially helpful with treats and toppers. Look for kcal per treat, piece, cup, can or package.
9. Look beyond the label.
Consider ingredient sourcing, freshness, processing, manufacturing, testing and the company’s transparency. There are important things about food quality that an ingredient panel simply cannot tell you.
Read the Label—Then Look Beyond It
Learning to read an ingredient label is one of the best tools you can have when choosing food for your dog, but don’t stop there. A label gives us clues; it doesn’t tell us the entire story.
We want to know what’s in our dogs’ bowls, but we also want to think about variety, freshness, processing, sourcing, digestibility and, importantly, how the individual dog does eating that food.
You don’t have to find one perfect ingredient panel, and feeding dogs well isn’t about winning a label-reading contest.
It’s about thoughtfully choosing foods that nourish them, bringing variety into the bowl where it makes sense, continuing to learn and paying attention to the dog standing in front of us.
Because ultimately, that’s the dog we’re feeding.