Quote:
Originally Posted by RoyalCaninCA  I do have a challenge for you: What would this ingredient deck represent? (I'm only giving you ingredients here)
Steel, cast iron, fibreglass, aluminum, rubber, plastic, glass, leather... |
Hello everyone!
Lots of great discussions buzzing around the Friday challenge.
What we were looking for (and there were some really creative answers) was a car
(I'll tell you more specifically below about it) .... but what kind of car? There were some really specific guesses out there, but what part of the ingredient deck made you think of that car?
- The first ingredient is steel. But if all cars contain it, is it the same? Same quality? Same supplier?
- Fiberglass is commonly found in boats and some types of new production cars. But what about re-builds, repairs or add ons? Speakers even contain fiberglass.
- Most people would think rubber is tires. But do we know what type of tires? If we knew more about the car, we could assume what the tires might be, how much tread are left on them, if they are summer/winter (in the case up here in the North)
- Leather is sometimes the giveaway. But is it? We commonly associate leather with luxury, but is this exclusively the case anymore? You can pretty much get leather as an option on any make and model. We know that the leather option on a compact will not be the same leather used on a luxury sports car. If leather appeared higher on the ingredient deck would we think it was a more expensive car because they could use more? Think about higher grade leather, is much thinner (and softer) than lower grade leather which is thicker, or even bonded leather, so it would weight more. Also sports cars tend to have 2 seats vs suvs that have 7 or more seats.
Thinking beyond the ingredient deck, could you derive the performance, quality or safety of the car? What is the 0-60 mph time? Gas mileage? Front or side impact safety rating? Handling on turns or in rain? Options that you might need (4x4, A/C, Heating, Air bags)?
Looking at the ingredient deck of a pet food would be very similar to buying a car based only on its ingredient deck. You do not have all the information required to know the quality, performance, safety or nutrients provided. All cars will get you from point A to point B (if they are in proper working order), same as all pet food will provide basic nutrition for survival based on the National Research Council (NRC) and in the US the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO), but what do they do above and beyond to help the dog/cat thrive? Just looking at the ingredients won't tell you about that.
The car that this ingredient deck is based on is actually the old shop car my husband worked on in high school for his entire senior year (maybe why he would never stop talking about it). It is a red 1994 Chevy Cavalier Z24 complete with bald summer tires, a front and rear bumper rebuild, torn leather seats (with a 2 inch layer of gum attached to it from all the students who sat in the driver seat) and a barely running, back firing, engine. It got the students from point A to point B and even helped some of them achieve their G1 (learners permit) but it definitely was not a luxury car.
There is a lot more to what goes into a car than the name of the parts that go into it. Similarly with pet food. If you are relying on the ingredient label, you are missing a huge (and potentially the most important) aspect of the nutrition it offers. Did you know that there are courses offered to pet food manufacturers showing them how to “doctor” an ingredient label to make it more appealing to the consumer? And those courses don’t focus on actually making the food better, just on making the ingredient label LOOK better.
If reading the ingredient label is important to you, understand what you are looking for when you are reading it. If you think meat should be the first ingredient, why do you think that? For the protein level? Then look to the protein level, look at the amino acid profile, look at the digestibility of it. Think about what the company is doing to ensure quality, safety and consistency. If a company is saying the food contains a specific protein source, what are they doing to ensure that that’s what the food contains? What if the supplier sends something different from what they order? What if it’s contaminated? What quality control measures do they have in place throughout the manufacturing process?
I don’t expect to change everyone’s minds on the correct way to evaluate pet foods, but I do hope that you start asking more questions (and demanding more answers) about pet nutrition, beyond just the order of the ingredients on the label. The American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) provides a list of questions you should ask a pet food manufacturer
https://www.aahanet.org/library/nutritionalasmt.aspx (questions located about half way down page, under Diet Factors).
Ashley