The claims, ingredients, and company profiles all tend to blur into one another. Company's don't want to be one up'd, so they copy each other. This leaves the average consumer unable to make distinctions, confused, and lost. Worse, wanting some basis for decision making, they latch on to a popular pet food myth about a merit or danger and chase after that.
Moreover, the information provided by companies is often false or misleading. The competition is fierce and companies are desperate to set themselves apart from the crowd. So some claim a merit others cannot easily duplicate at a price point—such as picturing salmon filets, but using everything in the salmon but the filet. Truth can take a back seat in the race for dollars.
Many themes intended to convince consumers to purchase have little to do with product merit or health. Rather, companies appeal to consumers using emotion, storytelling, name dropping, urban legends, scare tactics, pseudoscience, and testimonials.
Emotion And Storytelling
Company "about" stories usually begin with how much the owner loves pets. (Love, however, is irrelevant to competency or honesty.)
The story continues with how their pet became ill or died eating all the "bad" commercial pet foods.
Something had to be done. So they set about becoming an expert on pet food (without actually describing what that expertise is or what the training, degrees, certifications, or technical accomplishments are).
They then invented their new improved food in a kitchen or had it made at a contract manufacturer (one that, incidentally, also makes the bad pet foods).
When fed to their pet and given to others to feed, the results are spectacular no matter what the brand, the ingredients, or any other feature.
Name Dropping
Reference is usually made to some supposed nutritional and health expert that had a hand in the creation of the new food. However, no specific proof is cited that the supposed expert is in fact expert in the essentials for creating nutritional, food science, processing technology, and health advances. Sometimes a doctor's degree is referenced, but the degree may have no relevance to the essentials.
Moreover, usually the expert, if not the owner of the company, has no control over what does or does not go in the food or how it is made.
Perhaps most irrelevant, is the name dropping of television or movie personalities. However, to a public infatuated with media personalities, it can work to such an extent that the stars themselves decide to cash in on their own pet food brand.
Other deceptive name dropping includes product features such as:
- Raw (for products that are cooked and not in fact raw)
- Fresh (for products that are not in fact fresh)
- Holistic (for products that are not holistic and look identical to nonholistic products)
- Proprietary (for products not proprietary)
- Patent pending (for products not pending a patent)
- First and Only (for products not first or only)
- Human grade (for products not human grade)
- Locally sourced (for products and ingredients not locally sourced)
- Slow cooked (for products that are not slow cooked)
- Five star rated (by a rater or advisor using criteria not proven to be relevant to health)
Urban Legends And Scare Tactics
Next the new improved brand attempts to appeal to popular beliefs by consumers and set itself apart from all the other "bad" products (which, incidentally, all seem to have the same stories to tell, similar ingredient lists and nutrient analyses, and are made at similar factories). Chasing such urban legends has to do with business interest, and little or nothing to do with health.
For example:
Grain Free
This claim leads consumers to believe the product is more nutritious and higher in meat. However, the grains omitted are replaced with other starch sources such as potato and tapioca. So the starch/sugar load is unchanged. The quantity of meat is unchanged. The replaced starch is actually less nutritious than the grains. Moreover, there is no proof that grain free foods yield better health for animals than other starch-based pet foods. These facts are ignored by producers, advisors, raters, rankers and reviewers, and escape an uninformed public.
No This Or That
Every brand highlights a list of "No" ingredients. By claiming they have the same No's as every other brand and then coming up with a new No, the brand can carve out a new market niche. That's because simply stating No...whatever, leads the public to believe there is something wrong with the whatever.
Here are examples of the NO ingredients:
- No grains (actually better than the starch sources used to replace them)
- No potato (potato is better than some other starch sources used to replace it)
- No pork (perfectly fine protein ingredient)
- No fish (perfectly fine protein ingredient)
- No beef (perfectly fine protein ingredient)
- No by-Products (nutritionally superior to most human-grade ingredients)
- No meals (more processed than fresh or frozen, but a perfectly fine protein ingredient)
- No eggs (perfectly fine protein ingredient and source of other nutrients)
- No dairy (perfectly fine protein ingredient and source of other nutrients))
- No synthetic vitamins (they are essential if the food is processed)
- No fillers (this is a strawman since no company uses fillers)
- No Chinese ingredients (some essential nutrients are only available from China; past adulteration does not mean present adulteration)
- No dyes (synthetic dangerous dyes are rare in pet foods)
- No gmo's (not proven to cause harm in pet foods, but wise to exclude)
- No 3-D and 4-D meats (this, not human grade, is exactly what predators eat in the wild)
- No road kill (it is a myth that this is used in commercial pet foods)
- No euthanized pets (it is a myth that this is used in pet foods)
All such No ingredients are marketed as nutritional and health advancements without any scientific or empirical evidence that pets are harmed eating foods with those ingredients. And there is not a wit of evidence in the scientific, medical, or nutritional peer-reviewed literature.
Pseudoscience
Claims are made about nutrient percentages, AAFCO feeding trials, being 100% complete and balanced, studies (improperly designed and controlled), and USDA, FDA, and certification approvals. Yet there is no evidence that pets fed in variety (as they should be), have or do benefit from foods with such stamps of approval.
Testimonials
Every single brand can produce testimonials endorsing it. Though they may inspire confidence, particularly from people who have used the products over significant time, they alone cannot be the basis for decision making.
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