We recently had a few speakers come to the clinic to talk to us. One speaker was our Hill's food representative. He routinely comes up to talk to us about new diets that their company is coming out with and tries to answer any questions that we have or that our clients have. This time we talked a little about how to read a pet food label.

The first thing we learned was that reading labels can be very confusing! We learned that reading the ingredient label may not be as informative as we thought. I believed that the first ingredient on a pet food label is what was in the diet in greatest quantity. That may be true...But there is no standard that says that the ingredient list must be listed based on dry matter. For example, if a diet lists its first ingredient as chicken, that could mean frozen chicken. But when they put the chicken in the diet it is cooked and dehydrated, so the actual chicken content is quite low, as compared on a dry matter basis.

Another common gimmick is feeding an all protein or high protein diet to dogs with NO GRAIN! Dogs are not carnivores! They need carbohydrates as well as protein! If you look closely at these diets, you will see that they do indeed have carbs in them...Like sweet potato! Again beware the new "fad" diets. I always tell people that if they are unsure of the diet that they are feeding, they should be able to call them, (A 1-800 number on the bag) and ask to speak to the veterinary dietician to get all the information you need. If you can't do that, then you may want to look at another diet! The unfortunate thing we found out is that there is really not much on a pet food label that lets us know if the food is a good one or not! Our representative showed us a Guaranteed Analysis of one of their diets, and a "mystery diet." They both looked fairly similar.....except the mystery diet was actually ground up leather boots and motor oil. Not something you would want to feed your pet, but the guaranteed analysis looked great!

We learned that the most information you can get from a pet food label can be found in the AAFCO statement. AAFCO stands for the Association of American Feed Control Officials. IF a pet food has an AAFCO statement then that means that they either did a laboratory analysis on the food or a feeding test. The feeding test is a more preferable test because then you know the food was palatable and the animals did well on it. Laboratory analysis means that they did some mathematical calculations on the food, but it wasn't fed to a pet in a food trial. CAN YOU SAY CONFUSING!!!! The AAFCO statement will also tell you what life stage to feed the diet. The different life stages based on AAFCO are puppy/kitten and adult. There are no standards yet under AAFCO for a senior food at this time.

I think of our pets' nutrition the same way I think of human nutrition. A baby is going to need different nutrients as compared to a senior! Same with our pets, sooooo, if the AAFCO statement says "for all life stages" then basically the diet in that bag, is a puppy or kitten food. Puppies and kittens have a higher requirement for protein, fat, and carbs. If the statement says "for all life stages" then it has to meet the requirements for puppies and kittens! Do you think that type of food is appropriate for a 12 year old dog or cat? Definitely not! Pet food labels are confusing but hopefully this little tid-bit of information will help you wade through all the information that is out there. If you are still unsure, please don't hesitate to call the clinic, and I can help you to the best of my abilities!