Earlier this week we wrote about how to understand dog food label and find the bad ingredients, Click here to read up. In this segment of our discourse on dog food, we'll be talking about the exact bad ingredients in dog food and why they are bad. Most times, the popular dog foods are popular not because they are so awesome, but because they usually have huge advertising budgets, which help to put them everywhere in front of people, making them a familiar product to dog owners, and by so doing they are perceived as the best in terms of quality. The real fact about the actual quality of the ingredients used in making these foods may shock you.
Let's consider some "guaranteed analysis, " one of the well-known ones is "the Protein Content" which are often claimed that it came through the meat. This is not all true as Protein nutrient can be sourced from a variety of places, such as Soy Corn, By-products, Eggs, Meal, and Digest. Overall, always look at the ingredients to see where actually the protein nutrient is coming from.
The following are the list of back ingredients in dog foods:
- Animal Digest:
The animal digest may be sourced from chemical and/or enzymatic hydrolysis of clean and undecomposed animal tissue. Animal digest is not particularly a bad ingredient on its own, the trouble with feeding your dog with animal digest is about the source of the food. There is no quality control, which will help to guard against contaminations in preparing animal digest as dog food.
Any digest may be sourced from animal or poultry, and indeed any kind of animal may be used without any health considerations. E.g. "4-D Animals”, including dead, deceased, disabled, or dying prior to slaughter, goats, pigs, horses, rats. Animals euthanized at shelters, restaurants, and supermarkets refuse and so on. If you French Bulldog is taking animal digest, chances are that he may have eaten some contaminated foods or food poisons. The best thing to do is to watch out for dog food that is transparent about how they source their animal digest dog foods.
- Soybean Meal:
Soybean is obtained from the flakes remaining after the oil have been extracted from soybeans. These flakes are then ground. It then becomes the Soybean meal.
The down-side of this in the poor quality of the protein filter used. In general, Soybeans Meal has a biologic value of less than 50% of chicken Meal.
- Artificial Flavors and Colors:
Artificial flavors and colors are an ingredient used to make the dog food appear than it actually is. These humanly-contrived addictives ingredients may conceal damage and inferiority.
- Meat By-Products:
These consist of the rendered, clean parts of the carcass of slaughtered meats, such as heads, feet, viscera, free from fecal content and foreign matter except in such amounts as might occur unavoidably in good processing practices. Meat by-products are an inconsistent ingredient because of the multiple organs used, their constantly changing proportions and their questionable nutritional value. Meat by-products are much less expensive and less digestible than "meal".
- BHA/BHT:
BHA and BHT stand for Butylated Hydroxyanisole and Butylated Hydroxytoluene. These are chemical preservative ingredients that are vividly harmful to humans due to their chemical compositions. Note that BHA and BHT are no longer consumables for humans in the United States but they are still allowed in Dog foods.
N.B: Ethoxyquin is another chemical preservative that have been found to be harmful, yet are still allowed in dog foods.
- Beet Pulp:
There are sourced from sugar beets, extracted in the process of sugar manufacturing. In dog foods, this acts as fibrous stool hardener.
read also: What is The Healthy French Bulldog Weight?
HINT:
When considering meat "meals", one thing you must search for is the NON-SPECIFIC meals. An example may help you here; if a product uses the word "Meat" instead of "Beef". Or "Fish" instead of Salmon. Or "Poultry" instead of "Chicken", it is bad but if your food has a specific Meal type in it- that is okay, something like; Lamb Meal, Turkey Meal, Chicken Meal, Salmon Meal, Beef Meal.... those are all good types.
Here are more examples of bad ingredients in dog food:
- Meat Meal: It is gotten from mammal tissue without any added blood, hair, hoof, horn, hides trimmings, manure, stomach and rumen contents. Just as pointed out above, when the ingredient is described like this, the animal part used for making the food can literally be obtained from just anywhere without any form of quality control.
N.B: Almost the same can be said to about such other descriptions as Poultry Meal, and Meat and Bone Meal. If the Dog Food is from a particular source, if would read something like Chicken Meal or turkey etc.
- Corn Syrup, Cane Molasses, and Sugar:
These are sugar and sweeteners found in dog foods. Sugar or sweeteners is an absolutely unnecessary ingredient in pet foods, added to make the product more attractive. Continuous intake can promote hypoglycemia, obesity, nervousness, cataracts, tooth decay, arthritis, and allergies. Pets also get addicted to foods that contain sugars, so it can be a tough piece of work to make them eat something healthier.
We sincerely do hope that this article has helped in knowing the healthy food you may choose for your Frenchie Bulldog or any similar pet you keep. If you have any question or comment, please use the comment box below.