Pet Food Ingredients - I - Ingredient Splitting

I

Ingredient Splitting


Hello, welcome to one of the pet food industries Dirty Little Secrets 

So you have been doing your best to find a quality pet food for Fido and Fluffy.
At first you were unaware of what to look for on the back of a can.

Actually you, like most people ..including myself...did not even look at the back of the can or bag. 

Now you are doing your best to read the ingredients. You know what you want to see - MEAT- as the first ingredient. 

Sure it's still confusing what kind of meat you want to see.. trying to figure out the difference between whole chicken, deboned chicken, chicken, chicken by product, chicken meal, chicken by product meal...you may need a pet food to English dictionary. 

But you do know you want to see MEAT. 

Companies are also aware you are looking.


Now for your higher quality and more ethical companies , the fact that you are looking at the ingredients makes them happy. 

Finally the consumers will know that their product is worthy of being looked at under a microscope. 

Do it! They want you to!!


On the other hand...

Some of the big name brands are terrified. 
They are shaking in their money lined boots. 

They are profiting off of consumers lack of knowledge. 
Big time.
We are talking Billion Dollar Industries. 


They do use some of that profit towards improving their brand...name...
Marketing tactics that make Apple jealous. 

I would not be surprised if Blue Buffalo received a call from Blackberry, begging for use of their marketing staff. (with sales jumping 200% for Blue Buffalo I don't blame them) *not stating Blue Buffalo splits ingredients - I am speaking only on their rather fantastic marketing

So what am I talking about?

Deception. 

Ingredient Splitting :
The practice of subdividing a less attractive ingredient such as corn, in order to make it appear lower on the ingredient list. 
In doing so, meat floats up to the top of the list.
Giving a false impression that Meat is the predominant ingredient in the food. 

You may see a list like this (but not this, I just made it up)
Chicken Meal, Ground Yellow Corn, Animal Fat, Corn Gluten Meal, Turkey By-Product, Wheat Gluten, Brewers Rice, Corn Bran

If it were illegal to split ingredients you would see: Corn, Chicken Meal, Whole Grain, Turkey By-Product

That still looks better then most of your grocery store pet foods
(I could be wrong on the renaming of the rice and wheat gluten as whole grain)


Here are some of the Corn words used.
 
Corn, corn bran, corn flour, corn gluten, corn gluten meal, corn grits, corn starch, corn husks, corn syrup, corn meal, corn oil, ground corn, ground yellow corn, whole grain corn, maize


That is just a list that I could think of...I am really starting to hate corn. 


This is also done with other grains. 
There are some pet foods that are basically just grains.

How is that possible????
Damn plant based protein.
But that is another post...


Here are a few cat foods I have been looking at that currently seem to be good 
(seriously, tomorrow I could change my opinion because of an ingredient I currently know nothing about that happens to cause crazy cat syndrome or something equally fun)

 Nature`s Variety - Instinct

 Wild Calling 

 Orijen

Innova

Wellness Core












So what the heck does a person look for?

Honestly?

Grain Free.


But you also have to be aware of some of the grain free products being higher in fat and lower in protein - why? $$$



Once again I end this post with a hope that we all start to READ THE LABELS 

One of these days I will be able to get through a whole ingredient list on a Meow Mix bag ( why meow mix- long list with strange scary words)