Even if people don't intend to group SD Rx with regular SD, the people reading these threads do get other ideas. That is evident in Sick and Injured.
I used to have very similar feelings about feeding food from the majors companies and my opinion has changed somewhat.
If you don't like corn in dog food, there is no reason to feed it to a healthy dog.
Nobody has any proof to indicate that years down the road a dog fed a holistic food is going to be healthier than a dog fed SD. Less people feed holistic foods than major brands and yet there are still a large number of reviews of the "better brands" causing issues. Any food can cause an issue and the best food for a dog is one that they thrive on.
I'm not really sure why there has been so much focus on SD lately? There was focus on Iams for awhile which was understandable with the cruelty videos that are circulating. But then, there are probably a lot of companies that treat their animals similarly.
I know that there are untruths about SD on the internet. True: vet students get free SD, Iams, or Purina. BUT also true: Some schools have a Natura program (started before they were bought by Iams). True: Some vets have had good experiences with it, possibly from when they got it for free as a student and that may influence their recommendation. False: Most vets like pushing it, esp. for the money they receive from its sale. False: Most vets try to put most of their patients on it.
If there is some program that SD offers to get massive amounts of money into the hands of vets just for selling the food, I'm sure the vets here would love to be informed about it. In fact, it takes so much room to stock, money to handle it, and the profit margin for a lot of vets is very low. They would rather not have to deal with it.
And also, I've seen "way too many" issues/problems/recalls with a lot of "holistic" foods and wonder how safe most of them really are. Look at the issues awhile back with Diamond (a ton of foods are made there), Merrick and their inability to control salmonella, but a willingness to still sell the treats that the problem occurs in (chews, treats), GO and the pups that died from it, Evangers and the fact that they lie about what is in their food and can't get paperwork straight, Nutro and the massive number of dogs having issues with it, Menu and their inability to report the need to recall in a timely manner (manufacturer of "better" canned foods), etc. Recalls will happen no matter the company, but with some I am seeing things go on that are completely unacceptable and it does not increase my faith in the holistic dog food market.
In the end, to me the reputation of a company and the trust I have in their ability to detect issues with their foods is more important to me than ingredients in most cases. I would feed regular SD over a lot of holistic foods. Of course there could still be issues with the companies, but I feel like they are at an advantage when taking the overall picture into consideration.
If for whatever reason SD NB doesn't work for my puppy, we will be choosing another food. That will be based on what he tolerates.