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Originally Posted by AMD  I imagine corn gets it's bad rep partly from it being such a high allergen ingredient. I prefer grain-free, so I'm not a big fan of RC, but I don't think corn is inherently bad. My biggest complaint about RC using corn is not the corn, it's that they use CORN GLUTEN MEAL! 
"Corn gluten meal is the by-product after the manufacture of corn syrup or starch, and is the dried residue after the removal of the bran, germ, and starch." ( Interpreting Dog Food Labels)
Apparently, corn gluten meal is also used for lawn care. lol |
It's considered a common allergen because it's used in so many dog foods, not because of the number of dogs who are allergic to it. I know that your link says that " Corn gluten meal is the by-product after the manufacture of corn syrup or starch, and is the dried residue after the removal of the bran, germ, and starch." but what I'm saying is that unless we do more research, we may not have a true understanding on why it's used, and what it really does. For example there are studies that show corn gluten meal is actually better and easier to digest than other forms of protein.
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Case, et al. (1990) reported that when fed to puppies, the nutrient availability of CGM was superior to poultry by-product meal. In general terms, protein digestibility of CGM in dogs is high (avg. 88%; Yamka, et al., 2004). Relative to other studies, this ranks CGM even with poultry meal and better than soybean meal. Recent work in the dog has tried to determine if an animal-based protein is better than or different from vegetable proteins. Corn gluten meal is often the reference vegetable protein used in these studies.
Research reported by Wakshlag, et al. (2003) demonstrated that dogs fed a 28% protein diet where the protein was supplied exclusively by CGM had greater lean body mass loss in 10 weeks than dogs fed a similar diet containing chicken protein. The researchers speculated that this was due to the higher cysteine:methionine ratio and greater arginine concentration in the chicken-based diet. The loss in lean body mass was not observed when a combination of CGM and chicken as fed. This may be due to the complementarity of lysine and arginine from the chicken with the methionine and cystine of CGM. In another study, muscle turnover was influenced by a CGM-based diet (Helman, et al., 2003), which further points to the value of pairing CGM with other protein sources rather than using it as the sole source. Corn gluten meal in pet food |
Also biewer rice and brown rice are before Corn gluten meal. I'm just saying that it's hard to get the full picture from a few sentences. I not trying to imply that I know the answers, I've just studied enough nutrition to realize it's much more complex than what you read from these websites. You really can't separate ingredients like they do; one ingredient works with other to give a balanced diet. I prefer companies who do believe in scientific testing of the ingredients, and when they make a claim can back it up with some real data.