[Ellie May]

Nutrition is always chaning; however, the "experts" in the field (DVM, PhD, DACVN) seem to agree pretty closely with each other. Small Animal Clinical Nutrition has contributors that are specialists from different areas of vet med. The main editors have their DVM and PhD while also being diplomats of the ACVN. They wrote/edited a textbook together, so I highly doubt their views on nutrition are too far apart.

I have no idea what each company uses in their food. I'm sure a lot of it is incredibly disgusting and I wouldn't want to see it. I don't see how that makes Science Diet any less digestible than a holistic brand though. If we are talking about shoe leather, then leather is skin. Skin is part of meat meal, right? So who's to say SD uses shoe leather in their food and holistic company X does not? Any company can make it sound good on the ingredients list.

Meat, poultry, and fish can have good amino acid profiles. That doesn't mean a combination of other ingredients can't accomplish the same thing. Whether or not somebody wants to feed corn as a first ingredient is personal preference (I happen to not want to), but to say other foods richer in meat are superior, well, I don't really see anything to back that up?

If AAFCO isn't or shouldn't be the authority on nutrient levels in dog food, I'm not sure who should be. I know of no other group that has done more testing. I guess then each owner decides if the food they feed has enough nutrients or not which is not science. As for digestibility, feeding trials help substantiate that hte food is digestible. Most holistic companies do not do this.

I'm not against the new, "premium" companies. I'm just wondering where a lot of the information online comes from. I assume a lot of it comes from whoever dogfoodanalysis uses are their source and that is not science. The number of stars that some randow person on the internet decided to assign a particular dog food should not influence whether or not I feed said food. (JMO)