Dr. Garnett's Food Corner: Some of the factors that make pet food brands different

Dr. Garnett's Food Corner: 

Since so many clients are confused about the wide array of products on the market for their pets, Dr. Garnett will be sharing a few of her ideas on how people can make intelligent choices about what to feed.

 

Click here to see last month's article:  What can you tell from the pet food bag?

 

This month I'm going to talk about some of the factors that do make pet foods different.  

      Commercial pet food diets are all processed and cooked in a similar fashion.  The big differences between the pet foods are in the quality of ingredients used, and how well they control manufacturing quality.  Higher price does not always mean higher quality; it may simply mean more profit for the pet food company.  I worry about diets from pet food marketing-distribution companies that don't make their own foods.  I think they may potentially fluctuate more from batch to batch than a company where it's all done in-house. 

     What do I recommend?  I strongly recommend using a food from one of the larger pet food manufacturing companies like Royal Canin, Hill's Pet Nutrition that makes Science Diet products, Nestle Purina, and Iams PetCare.  They will control all aspects of development, manufacturing and sales, so there is more company oversight of the pet food process.  These are also the companies that are investing in research that promotes veterinary medicine and veterinary nutrition.  They are pushing the bounds of what we know about improving health and treating disease through diets.  In contrast, a pet food marketing company may outsource all of the food development and manufacturing to a third party, which makes the food and returns it to the company to sell. 

     Next month - what about Grain Free Diets?