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Originally Posted by Nancy1999  I don't want to tell you what to think, lol, not that I could if I wanted!  I'm just saying that nutrition is not as clear as some would have you believe. I don't like foods with artificial colors; I believe that they are totally unnecessary. Are they really harmful? I don't know, but they can stain your carpet.  I think corn is a good food, so that ingredient wouldn't sway me. I still don't think it should be considered the primary source of protein, a meat should be the first ingredient, but I've got to say, I'm not thoroughly convinced as to the "whys" yet, just slightly more convinced. Are you talking about a corn by product or a meat by product?
I do think some companies are looking to put out an inexpensive "good" food that is suitable for most dogs and there are grocery store brands that fill this need. I do prefer a food that has a meat as the primary source of protein, but there may be reasons why sometimes you don't want to do this. Also, I prefer a meat that doesn't use "by products".
Here's what the Dog Food Project says about By products.
•Byproducts of any type are less desirable and only acceptable if they do not make up the main source of animal protein and if the name of the species used is also defined in some manner (e.g. "chicken byproducts" or "beef byproducts" but not "meat byproducts" or "poultry byproducts"). Byproducts consist of anything but the quality cuts of meat and highest quality edible offal used for human consumption. What this means (on a market with high demand for human snacks like "buffalo wings" and cheaper pet foods requiring flavoring agents like beef or chicken liver digest to make otherwise uninteresting food more attractive), I leave to your imagination. The Dog Food Project - Identifying better products
When you call something a bad food, I think that means it's really unhealthy, will eating Beneful make a dog unhealthy, I'm quite sure it won't. People seem to like to compare dog foods with McDonnell’s, and call certain foods "junk' food. Maybe because they've read it so much they believe it to be true, but it's not true. It's very difficult to get a balanced meal at McDonnell’s. Humans need complex carbohydrates, as in whole grains and green vegetables, and protein, in the right proportion with the right amount of calories for our daily needs. All dog foods even the ones at the grocery store have this. I really believe that Beneful is much more healthy for the dog, that what the average American eats. After reading Yorkietalk for about 5 years, I don’t' think I can find any correlations between what people call bad food and health problems, in fact, sometimes it seems like just the opposite. |
Well Katie was fed Beneful, and when she started having uti and bladder problems, her owner did not feed her the rx diet she was supposed to and of course, her condition got worse. Of course we can't say that Beneful caused her to have the problems in the first place. But the cat I had before had similar bladder issues and he was fed really crap food as well. Just personally, I see a connection, even if it is purely coincidental.
I suppose the main point of feeding a dog any food, is so it won't starve to death, then I guess Beneful does its job great.
But the fact they use artificial colors means they are a bad food to me. It's not proven fact that these artificial colors can cause cancer or whatever, but it doesn't need to be there, it's just for the human eye to have it look more appealing.
Now on the corn thing, the thing that confuses me is that when corn is eaten, the whole kernel, the body hardly digests it, as it comes out pretty much looking like how it went in. Is corn even a nutritious food? I have read that huitlacoche is more nutritious than the corn crops they infect. Maybe we should be feeding that to dogs too. LOL
I do tend to think of Beneful more as the McD's equivalent. Katie was kind of pudgy. But then again, she could have been free fed, I don't know.