Rating of Dry Dog foods
 

By Dog Food Advisor

Five Star Dry Dog Foods | Dog Food Advisor

FOOOD FIIIIIIIGHT!!!!!!! :D Seriously, though, DFA is a good place to start, but it certainly isn't the final word, and they underrate some foods that are perfectly fine. I do like the fact they are a one stop place to compare ingredients.

I think a better way to choose dog food is to just close your eyes and pick one off the shelf. I'm just kidding :). But I don't like DFA as a source.

FYI:
On May 15, the FDA announced that OC Raw Dog of Rancho Santa Margarita, CA, is recalling its OC Raw Turkey and Produce Raw Frozen Canine formula because it has the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella bacteria.
To learn which products are affected, please visit the following link:
OC Raw Dog Food Recall of 2015

Oh shoot! I guess I should've looked read here first, I just posted a thread about this very same recall. Always a day late and a dollar short! :D Sorry, I didn't mean to hijack this thread. ;)

I think the site can be a very helpful as part as an overall education in learning about dog foods. Some people don't believe we should learn about the ingredients, we should just trust the companies to do what's best for our dogs, since they hire vet nutritionists. I think the site has much improved from it's earlier beginnings when ingredients weren't always kept up to date, but just because the author is a dentist, instead of a vet nutritionist, it doesn't mean the information is poor. He's not designing a diet, he's just telling you what's in those foods and what nutrition it provides. Here's another site that has helpful information, The Dog Food Project - Myths about Dog Nutrition. I'm glad you are learning about nutrition!

By the way, you can also learn about dogfood recalls there. Dog Food Recalls | Dog Food Advisor

My biggest issue is the rating of the food and that there are many people who think it is gospel. You can't just rate a food by its ingredients there is so much more. There are people who say might see a diamond food with 5 stars even though they have had some serious issues. There are ingredients that may look great to us and be great for us as humans but not so good for our dogs and may effect them differently. Its important to remember dogs and humans systems are different.

Actually, if you read the site carefully, he explains it's limitations rather well, and I believe that the reason so many people hate the site is that their favorite dog food was rated poorly. I agree with you, though, I wouldn't take the rating system as gospel either, but it's does offer one person's opinion of the quality of food. Read other independent sites, and you'll see many seem to be saying the same thing. I studied variations in diets among different organism and truthfully, it was impossible to "prove" a healthy diet was any better than an average diet. A diet had to be woefully inadequate to really "show proof" that it was poor. In this day and age, nobody wants to really experiment on animals either, and that would mean actually killing them and doing autopsies to study the organs. You are correct again in saying that dogs and human systems are different and that's exactly why the dentist seems to be more in favor of the diets that contain less grains. I think of it like Consumer reports, just a little more information about a product, I'm thinking about buying.

Yikes!! haha...Ok, first of all I do read up a lot on dog foods and what is best for the babies. I see my post has sparked a fuse which wasn't my intention. I'm not a member of that site, but what I got from it today was a list of all the dog foods, which first of was HUGE...then I had a starting point. I did find out that the guy who started it is a dentist and not a vet...which is fine. I'm a Realtor. He began studying this as a layman because he lost a pet to a poisonous bag of Purina from China and was devastated. I would see myself doing that. In fact, I'm so paranoid about whats in dog food because I truly believe that the cancer I have lost 2 dogs and currently one is suffering from it, is because of the crap that they ingest or have injected.

I know there are many ways to gather information and assimilate it. I acutally learn quite a bit from people I disagree with because I do try to understand what it is they are saying, and I am open to changing my mind if I am wrong or misinformed:)

So, I hope I didnt start anything:confused: because I just thought it was interesting. Plus there are a lot of young people with pets that may not even be aware of how important the right nutrition is for their little babies. So maybe sites like that can help them to see just how many choices there are and not all will be good ones. I'm old haha....and with age and time, you simply have to learn things to survive and grow.

Just wanted to point out a site I think is great about pet nutrition. It's run by a veterinary nutritionist www.petdiets.com

That's a great trait, and you will be learning new things all your life! Once you know it all, you stop learning!

Bricks flying overhead! Ouch! :D Actually, Bella's Wellness Core Grain Free Small Breed is rated five stars, and I still have problems with the DFA website. Blue Buffalo, which rates from 4 to 5 stars depending on the product, has SERIOUS quality control issues--I got a bag with no Life Source bits, and woe to the people who got bags containing nothing BUT Life Source bits. So besides ingredients, one must also consider quality control. And DFA nitpicks over ingredients that are so far down on the list of ingredients that they are insignificant (tomato pomace, for example). I'd rate Dog Food Advisor three stars, LOL! He's not a veterinary nutritionist, but he's not sending dogs to a certain death, either. He's just another source of information to consider.

That is hilarious lol seriously. I am very glad I was not drinking.

Don't worry, by now, most of us have developed a sense of humor about discussing commercial dog foods. I don't think that any of the five star foods are horrible. It's an okay place to start--it's where I started out.

I'm sorry, if that comes off as disrespectful, but I do really believe it. People can't stand to be told that the dog food they've chosen isn't the best food ever. I agree with you on BB, but the author of the site, does say:



I'm not saying you should take every word as gospel, I actually like the Dog Project website better for teaching, but it's informative and useful and shouldn't be discounted just because the author is a dentist.

I don't know about you and how you feel about the foods you feed; but I personally don't care what people think about what I feed.

What I DO care about is the constant rants about pet foods that frighten pet owners....foods that are quite valuable and necessary especially for sick pups. Bothers me immensely as I have said time and time again that anyone should feel they are giving something bad to their pets because some armchair nutritionist said the food their vet told them to feed their sick baby is bad/unhealthy. Horrible

Fair enough. I didn't think you were disrespectful--I was just trying to inject a little humor while discussing a controversial topic. Thanks for posting the disclaimers that the Dog Food Advisor has on his website--they are helpful.

BTW, I agree that the Dog Food Project website has a little more octane behind it.

Considering my dogs food saved her life I KNOW my dogs food is the best for her! I personally don't necessarily believe what is the fad of what is the best ingredients right now. I think dogs need different things then us. One thing that is great for us might not be for them. When you start saying someone's food is not good then you should be prepared for arguments. I look at all these prescription foods and see all these ingredients people say are terrible in them yet thousands of sick dogs are made better and thriving on them. I'm not sure how someone can say some ingredients are so crap nasty yet these sick dogs do so well and most of them if you switched to one of these super 5 star rated foods wouldn't do as well and it might even make them sicker or have more issues. So what does that tell you about all those evil ingredients?

Very true. I have learned to respect prescription foods--they are real life savers, and they ARE prepared by veterinary nutritionists. Food for thought.

When I first started being interested in dog nutrition / dog food - I found DFA invaluable - bc I learned about different ingredients and how they're listed in dog foods and what they may be for or may mean etcetera. It sparked me to learn more. I think it can be a tool in an educational tool box.

Yup...he's just another source for info and learning. One of hopefully many tools in one's dog food learning toolbox.

Okay, I'll take your word for that, I wasn't aware of it. :D This is the page I was looking for yesterday, I think it explains some of the limitations of rating foods. The Problem with Dog Food Reviews

As to the bolded statement in the post above, I can only say this....
Pretty flawed thinking imho. I am willing to pay more for real experts (ie vet nutritionists) and feeding trials, NOT fancy marketing such as the BB law suit has uncovered. I stopped buying a dog food for that reason...they had all the fancy words on their website and the "desired" ingredients, but ignored my requests for names and qualifications of the "experts" they claimed had formulated the diets. Just because a company has the ingredients that guy says are more acceptable does not mean the quality control is there.

You're far too kind. The bolded statement makes me want to scream and throw my laptop out the window, because he's basically saying that his reviews are meaningless except for figuring out if you're getting value for your money. Then he ends with a plea to consider his star rating--then do your own research. I could have done that in the first place and avoided the middle man (and spared myself a splitting headache).

This is why I think the site is useless.

I see this differently. I bolded the sentence because I think it's important information. I only took one class of nutrition in college, but this was stressed very heavily, there is not much difference between a C level diet and an A level diet that can be shown scientifically. This doesn't mean there is no difference, but we don't have the equipment to measure the difference. There are some nutritionist who believe that the less processed our diets are the better for us. There is no proof of this, but many nutritionists are started to lean that way. There is also no proof that organic fruits and vegetables are better for us either, we don't have the equipment to show the differences. We do now know that organic gardening is better for the earth, but nothing shows it's healthier for us, yet. What this tells me is we don't have enough information. The website is neither gospel or worthless, it can add to your overall understanding of nutrition if you read enough. By the way, figuring out if you get value for your money, is far from meaningless to me.

I see your point, but my head is still spinning. A and C level foods have been available for decades, though, and if something hasn't been proven by the millions of dogs fed on these foods for their entire lives, perhaps there never will be. It all comes back to feeding what your own dog likes and does best on. If Bella did equally well on Orijen and Ol Roy, wouldn't Ol Roy be the best value, for all intents and purposes, since you can get a huge bag for just a few bucks? (Don't worry, I would never feed Bella Ol Roy--that's just an example.)

Yeah, well I don't even GO to his website anymore. IMHO he is merely making money. He covers his backside with all that nonsense, but he knows that people are swayed by what they want to believe. He's no fool, that's for sure.

One of the reasons I found a new major was I like things a little more black and white then they are in the field of nutrition. It's a very grey area with so many experts arguing. How do you define health, absence of disease or longevity? Diets just don't make much of a difference compared to other factors, like genetics. The main characteristic that indicated an unhealthy diet was if the diet contained too many calories, proper weight is the most important indicator of overall health. Some scientists believe that testing clone pups would give us better information on nutrition because you could take out some of the genetic component. However, there are many groups that are against this and see it as inhumane.

I don't believe that you can evaluate a food solely on how well you dog does, that one piece of the puzzle, I mean you can see if he's not vomiting, if has excessive gas, or gaining too much weight and if his hair looks healthy, and if he's not itching and has enough energy, but you really can't see how the internal organs are doing and I believe there is a difference between surviving and thriving, and I want to choose a food based upon many factors, but I expect my dogs would do well on a variety of different foods, it's just as they are getting older, I think diet plays an even more important part in there overall health.

I really wish dogs could talk and tell us how they're feeling, but since they can't... If a dog is healthy, happy, and energetic, doesn't itch, has a beautiful coat and the underlying skin is healthy, has a healthy weight, no excess gas, AND has good results when blood tests are run, isn't that the best we can expect?

Using cloned dogs in food trials is something I've never heard of before, and I wouldn't have any objections from a moral standpoint, so long as they are treated like regular dogs, not harmed in any way, and taken off the diet immediately if their health starts to deteriorate. A cloned dog is like an identical twin--each has its own personality. There is nothing inhumane about it unless you treat them inhumanely.

Thanks for the interesting discussion!

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These ratings are nothing more than HIS opinion of what is "good" for YOUR dog! This has always been the burr under MY saddle....opinions passed off as gospel and people thinking they are reading validated, irrefutability justified, researched, tested, and PROFESSIONALLY formulated diets. OPINIONS on what HE believes what is best for you to be feeding!!!

Quit pulling on my foot Linda, I am crawling back under the chair!!!!