ABOUT

This site is designed to bring reason and fact to the dilemma of selecting healthy dog foods and healthy cat foods.

The Internet abounds with pet food rating systems, do's and don'ts, advisors, and marketing. Unfortunately, there is a weakness all humans share, called scriptism, that automatically gives credibility to visual images, such as the written word. Moreover, much of the Internet advice is provided by those not qualified in the skills necessary, such as nutrition, health, biochemistry, toxicology, microbiology, and processing technology,

Since everybody thinks they know how to prepare a meal or select from a menu, everyone thinks they are a nutritionist, at least of sorts. Combine this with the potential profit in the food industry, and this results in companies and advisor sites emerging constantly headed by movie stars, television personalities, marketers, venture capitalists, home cooks, and animal lovers.

There are also those with authoritative, but irrelevant degrees. But even relevant nutritional degrees are too often used to simply create marketable products without regard to prioritizing health.

In other words, a person seeking the best food, the most healthy one, is faced with an industry containing those of good motive and poor competency—love of animals but little understanding of the healthy food sciences. There are also those of poor motive and good competency—they may know the sciences, but marketability and profit take precedence. Then there are those of poor motive and poor competency—market share is the driving force, and a health feature is only something to claim, not actually do.

Since a healthy pet food can be no better than the motives and competency of the producer, these criteria need to be given priority. This is in contrast to the common practice of measuring pet food merit by urban legend about percentages and what is or is not listed on the ingredient label.

Here are a couple of the many examples exposed on this site. Notice the "grain-free" wave of popularity. The public assumes this means there is something wrong with grains and that foods absent them are low carb, not toxic, and more meaty. However, there is no more meat, and the potato, tapioca, and other starch ingredient substitutes for grains have just as much starch carbohydrate, less nutritional value than grains, and potentially more toxicity.

For another example, notice how many pet foods now list meat as the first ingredient. To get meat into this first position, many companies use a wet meat gruel. This ingredient, even though it is called fresh meat, has been sterilized cooked by the supplier, preserved with chemical sterilants, and then can be held in a heated condition by the pet food manufacturer for one-and-a-half years while being incorporated into finished pet foods. When finally used, it is again cooked at hundreds of degrees.

No consideration is given to the effect of heat and time on nutritional and health value. No person would consume a soup setting on the stove heating for even a couple of days, let alone a year-and-a-half. Yet thousands of tons of pet foods with this ingredient are fed to pets under the advisement of all the experts, marketers, advisors, and Internet pet food rankers because meat is listed as the first ingredient and the label percentages seem fine.

Processing, the wild card in food production, is either not understood or is ignored by almost the entire food and nutritional advisor industry.

If you examine any dog food or cat food company, or of any pet food ranking or advisor site, there will be a story about how they love pets. Although love is important, it does not qualify either a company or an advisor as an expert on nutrition or animal health. These are complex subjects requiring significant study and experience in the fields mentioned above, not just love and good intentions.

Yes, virtually everyone associated with pets in any way cares about them. But the issue is, if someone is actually trying to make the best pet food, or guide you to it, what effort have they made to be relevantly competent other than in marketing.

Being a pet lover is not a qualification, nor are medical degrees or degrees even in nutrition or food science. No certificate qualifies one in the varied fields necessary to create the best pet food. The resulting incompetency will be highlighted on this site.

But just as important as expertise, is motive. If the most skilled and credentialed person is making a food but is not guided by putting health first, rather than market, they will not be able to achieve the best pet food.

Since, as will be explained on this site, there is no such thing as a reliable 100% complete and balanced pet food (regardless of the claim on virtually all pet food packaging), a person or company of good motive must be making the public aware of this. Further, they must educate consumers on how to supplement and vary the diet with real natural foods to help assure the best pet food.

As you will learn, few do this.

Thus, not only is expertise lacking, but so too is a pure health motive.

This site will hopefully provide the principles from which you can make sound choices among food choices and thus help you take control of your pet's health destiny.