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Originally Posted by dottiesyrky  I agree the quality control became terrible. When I first used B.B. it was after a food recall of another brand, and the B.B. rep in a store convinced me that their ingredients were good and pure. For some time my dog did well on it, but I found that with time, the variation from bag to bag was unacceptable, especially when my dog got sick. As for the black bits, I was told that they included nutrients that were destroyed in the high temperature processing. That seemed a good idea until the bits had severe quality control issues.
I would not buy B.B. again as I only feed the Hills, and also the reason for GM buying the company was to make money!!! Not likely to improve the BB quality!
I do wonder though about high temperature processing and loss of nutrient value in kibble? Or perhaps the spray they put on the kibble at the end of the processing also has added nutrients?
But even in the Prescription Hills ID that I feed my dog for health reasons, I found the color of the kibble sometimes varied from bag to bag. I was told by Hills that it was due to a variation in the final spray. So now I look at the kibble in each new bag for kibble color, and it seems that now the color is more consistent. I was concerned in case the spray contents were important for nutrients as well as smell and taste. |
My Small Animal Clinical Nutrition text book has a chapter on dog food manufacturing, and they say that very few vitamins are lost during the processing of dry kibble, and the losses that occur are compensated for by adding more so that the final product is nutritionally balanced. There is no reason for Blue Buffalo to have separate dark bits containing heat-sensitive vitamins--they could have mixed them in with the other kibbles and had a more uniform product. It's purely an advertising gimmick. Interestingly, the product applied during the final spray of the manufacturing process are flavor enhancers--they are much more appealing to the dog when they are on the outside of the kibble because that's what first hits their taste buds.
The problem with Blue Buffalo is that since they separate some of their vitamins into separate kibbles (the darker "life source bits"), they have to be extra careful that they achieve a uniform mixture when they bag the kibble, and they haven't been able to. It would be a good dog food if they could, but as I mentioned earlier, I bought a bag that had NO life source bits in it, so they are still not doing a good job.