We have become a world obsessed with reading food labels at the grocery store. How much sugar does this contain? How much sodium is in that? So why aren’t more people reading their pet food labels? Well for one, they are confusing at best. Human food labels are clearly marked. You know exactly what items the product contains and what vitamins and minerals that food provides. Pet foods are not held to the same standards. You can’t look on the back of your pet food label and tell how much calcium the food provides or how much taurine. You can’t even tell what ratio of protein vs carbohydrates is used without doing math. Even still, the math is just a guess.
Who sets the standards for pet food labels? AAFCO.
AAFCO is an animal feed advisory board that has defined standards and definitions for ingredients and labeling. It wasn’t until 1993 that they provided guidelines for “complete and balanced” pet food testing and minimum nutrient requirements.
Today, pet owners can easily google how to read a pet food label and will be provided with a handful of websites that lead to confusing explanations or misleading information. So, I’ll try to make it simple.
Step #1: Look at the Guaranteed Analysis
The Guaranteed Analysis label only lists the legal minimum or maximum of crude protein, fat, water, and fiber for that food. Not the actual amount contained in that food. Weird, right? But we can use this to make an educated guess! Some companies include more info, but it’s not required.
Carbohydrates are not listed in this label, however they are found in the ingredients list. Carbohydrates are not all bad and help provide an energy source and aid the digestive tract. That said, it should be noted that AAFCO does not define carbohydrates as nutritionally required for dogs and cats. In fact, dogs and cats produce their own energy from protein and fat, leaving carbohydrates unnecessary for energy purposes. Studies have proven that high carbohydrate diets in pets and people increase the risk of obesity, diabetes, inflammation, etc. Stay tuned for later posts about carbs! So let’s find out if your pet food is high in carbs!
*When no Ash amount is listed, we can guess this to be between 5 and 8%. Although Ash content of some foods may be lower or higher.
Let’s look at this freeze-dried raw diet.
Calculations: Start with 100% and subtract…
100% – 36% Crude Protein – 33% Crude Fat – 5% Crude Fiber – 6% moisture – 5-8% ash = 15-12% Carbohydrates
Not bad! So let’s look at a dry kibble diet.
100% – 28% Crude Protein – 17% Crude Fat – 4% Crude Fiber – 10% moisture – 5-8% ash = 36-33% Carbohydrates
Most dry kibble diets are 30-60% carbohydrates. Word of advice, pay attention to the carbohydrate percentage and pick a product with a lower percentage. I’ll explain why in a later post.
Step #2: Check the ingredients list
Ingredients are in order of weight when they are added into the formula. This weight includes the water content of each ingredient. Which means that when meat is listed as the first ingredient (70-75% water) it may actually only contribute a small amount to the crude protein content listed. (I have had clients tell me that their pet is on a great diet where a meat source is the first ingredient. After further investigation, the diet was 58% carbs!). So ingredient lists can be misleading.
Freeze-dried raw ingredient list:
Dry kibble ingredient list:
When choosing a diet for your pet, make sure that you know what at least 50% of those ingredients are.
Look out for future posts regarding pet foods!