10 Secrets That Pet Food Companies Don’t Want You to Know

(from members.shaw.ca – author unknown)

1. Pet food is NEVER mostly meat.
Although many ads suggest that it is, in listing a meat source on the bag label, pet food companies resort to a variety of gimmicks. Here are a few to get you thinking.
Listing a "wet" ingredient in what ends up being an essentially dry finished product. Wet meat gets a lot lighter when the moisture is cooked out. This labeling loophole is blatantly deceptive to the general public. All ingredients should be weighed and listed in dry weight equivalents for you to know truly how much of each makes up the ration.
If the label lists "chicken", it means chicken weighed when wet. Drop 75% of the value. If, on the other hand, it says "chicken meal", they play fairly. If it says, "meat by-product meal" or "meat by-products", it was never meat to begin with. Find another food. Meat and meat “by-products” are NOT the same thing, but they try to convince the public that they are.
Hmm... "Honey, I'm having a rib-eye steak tonight, and you're having a nice pile of by-products, ok?" "Would you like the chicken breast or the intestine-cartilage-beak medley with your rice, Bob?" "Well gee Dear, doesn't really make any difference to me, they all sound equally delicious, nutritious and healthy!"

2. The cooking process used in pet foods KILLS off a vital component: enzymes.
In order to eliminate bacteria and make cute shapes that pets care nothing about, processing temperatures in excess of 160F degrees are used to bake your pet's food. This places the entire burden for digestion on your pet's pancreas to supply the enzymes necessary for breaking down nutrients for absorption.
In puppies and kittens, the pancreas is usually robust and up to the task of supplying sufficient digestive enzymes to make food somewhat useable. With age, however, pancreatic function is weakened, and often can't keep up with this undue burden. If the pet food fed day in and day out is of low nutritional value to begin with, the taxing effect on the system will be all the greater and the pancreas will most likely give up that much sooner. Consequences to pet health are too broad in scope to cover here.

3. Giving "real food" aka "table scraps" is the RIGHT thing to do!
We’re here to smash the myth that you should only feed your pet the stuff from the bag and nothing else ever, PERIOD.
Here's the scoop: Providing real food (not potato chips or other junk food) in its raw form counteracts some of the deficit that can be caused by only feeding commercially prepared pet food. It can provide the living enzymes to make digestion an easy rather than burdensome process.
But, don't just go wild and throw everything in the feeding trough. Good bets for pets are raw carrots, broccoli, yogurt, cheese, garlic and meats. Cooked oatmeal, rice, corn, squash and the like are fine too. Don't feed raw grains, legumes, potatoes, onions, celery or chocolate, which are either unusable or unhealthy.

4. The majority of vets know very little about pet nutrition.
The public is told to, "Ask your vet". The vet is told by the pet food companies, "we'll send you to Hawaii for a week of golf if you sell and endorse XYZ brand pet food". In school, vets-to-be could ELECT to take an overview course in animal nutrition. Or not.
You are miles ahead if you understand the pet food label yourself and take the time to learn some basic nutritional concepts. It's not that complicated! Find out for yourself, trust your own judgment, and ignore what people say who are getting paid to say it.

5. The #1 vet recommended brand is probably the #1 worst pet food value.
Without mentioning any names, if it lists corn as the first ingredient on the label and gets blasted by the competition for it, you know the company.
Read the label! Compare it to the cheapest stuff you can find. There isn't a dime’s worth of difference in most cases. How much does it cost them to make a 40 lb. bag of this stuff you may wonder? Sit down…how about less than $3 including the cost of the bag! How much does the duped public shell out for the bushel of corn and peanut shells “most recommended by vets?” About $35.

6. Feeding "Soft-Moist" diets will cut your pet's life expectancy in half.
Thankfully, these foods are on the steep decline, but aren't gone yet. Perhaps killing your customers isn't a good way to develop long term brand loyalty. These toxic morsels are so loaded with chemicals to stay soft and prevent molding and so laden with sugar to cover the harsh chemical taste, they rip a pet's insides out.
The sweetness is addictive, and you'll hear owners say, "Fifi just won't eat anything else". Well, then better buy the small bag because who knows how long Fifi will be eating at all?! Anybody feeding this garbage should stop at once, and the manufacturers of it should be faced with a class action.

7. Many companies have "slithered" away from using ETHOXYQUIN.
The once popular, and staunchly defended as safe, preservative (antioxidant) called "Ethoxyquin" has been mostly abandoned because of "hushed" litigation and settlements with professional breeders. It formerly was championed by pet food manufacturers and others as an advanced and healthy inclusion in pet food in an attempt to hide the fact that it was never intended to be eaten, much less on a daily basis.
It was originally formulated as a rubber stabilizer and a color retention agent. Tires stayed pliable and spices stayed red. Despite efforts to get it approved as a food stabilizing agent in people food, it is only allowed for extremely limited application with colored spices.
The people who know the devastating truth about this ingredient when eaten daily by pets have been paid off and forced to never tell their stories. There are innumerable instances of stillbirth, sudden liver failure, kidney dysfunction, permanent pigment changes, tumors and death thought to be caused by the addition of this wonder substance to pet food starting in about 1987.

8. Nature didn't intend for pets to eat dry food devoid of enzymes.
Convenience is paid for in reduced pet health. Where is it written that your pet's bowl has to be filled with chalk dry nuggets of quasi-nutritious ground up brown stuff? We've been sold on a bad idea. We bought it because it made life easier.
Doesn't kibbled food make their teeth shiny and their breath fresh? Won't their teeth fall out if they eat soft stuff? Yeah…right. Ever watch your dog eat? Does it look like some kind of teeth cleaning exercise? How about the cat? Really getting the old gum line clean huh?
The truth about teeth cleaning is this... sticks, rocks, yarn, bones, toys and saliva primarily accomplish this task, not food. Commercial pet food has to be flavor enhanced with digest and sprayed-on fat to be even remotely attractive to your pet. Without these palatability modifications, the old dry kibble would just sit there and get dusty.
People get paid big money to invent coatings to make your pet dive headfirst into the food bowl. Because then you smile and feel like it must be healthy and that Fifi loves the food and you too so you'll buy it again. Right?

9. Some companies sneak sugar into pet food to hook your pet.
Watch out for these guys! They call it other things of course, like cane molasses, corn syrup, etc. but it absolutely does not belong in your pet's food bowl.
Processed sugars are foreign to dogs and cats and, over the long term, can result in obesity, tooth decay and diabetes (along with other maladies).
Until 2 years ago, propylene glycol was being used as a sweet tasting preservative by those who must have cared much more about shelf life than about pet health. Thankfully, it has finally been banned.

10. Almost all manufacturers use stool-hardening agents in pet food.
Convenience again triumphs over pet health. Stool modifiers make clean up easier and mask the effects of nutrient mal-absorption. Who's going to buy a pet food if you've got to SCRAPE up after your dog? It's easier to just stack those little bricks into a pile or kick them elsewhere.
Consider, however, the strain on your pet's innards. Would you put concrete mix in your pancake batter? How about sawdust? If you were dieting, would you mix ground peanut shells into your breakfast cereal? Well, they do all that and more for your beloved pet.
See if any of these made it into your pet food bag: sodium bentonite, powdered cellulose, beet pulp, tomato pomace, ground peanut shells? The explanation for including these usually is that they are fiber sources for your pet's well being. Maybe a little truth there but not the real reason they are added. Whole grains provide great fiber content. A bit of bran would do well too. The real goal is to make you buy the food again because clean up time is so easy and enjoyable with brand XYZ's designer stools.
If the food is good and fed properly, stools will be fine without forcing your pet to work a brick through their excretory system.