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By Jean Hofve, DVM
A trip down the pet food aisle these days will boggle the mind with all
the wonderful claims made by manufacturers for their particular
products. But what's the truth behind all this marvelous hype? You
might be very surprised…let's take a look.
1. Niche claims.
Today, if you have an indoor cat, a canine athlete, a Persian, a
Bloodhound, or a pet with a tender tummy or itchy feet, you can find a
food "designed" just for your pet's personal needs. Niche marketing has
arrived in a big way in the pet food industry. People like to feel
special, and a product with specific appeal is bound to sell better
than a general product like "puppy food." But the reality is that there
are only two nutritional standards against which all pet foods are
measured (adult and growth/gestation/lactation)—everything else is
marketing.
2. "Natural" or "Organic" claims.
The definition of "natural" adopted by AAFCO is very broad, and allows
for artificially processed ingredients that most of us would consider
very unnatural indeed. The term "organic", on the other hand, has a
very strict legal definition. However, some companies are adept at
evading the intent of these rules. For instance, the name of the
company or product may be intentionally misleading. For instance, some
companies use terms like "Nature" or "Natural" in the brand name,
whether or not their products fit the definition of natural.
3. Ingredient quality claims.
A lot of pet foods claim they contain "human grade" ingredients. This
is a completely meaningless term—which is why the pet food companies
get away with using it. The same applies to "USDA inspected" or similar
phrases. The implication is that the food is made using ingredients
that are passed by the USDA for human consumption, but there are many
ways around this. For instance, a facility might be USDA-inspected
during the day, but the pet food is made at night after the inspector
goes home. The use of such terms should be viewed as a "Hype Alert."
 4. "Meat is the first ingredient" claim. A
claim that a named meat (chicken, lamb, etc.) is the #1 ingredient is
generally seen for dry food. Ingredients are listed on the label by
weight, and raw chicken weighs a lot, since contains a lot of water. If
you look further down the list, you're likely to see ingredients such
as chicken or poultry by-product meal, meat-and-bone meal, corn gluten
meal, soybean meal, or other high-protein meal. Meals have had the fat
and water removed, and basically consist of a dry, lightweight protein
powder. It doesn't take much raw chicken to weigh more than a great big
pile of this powder, so in reality the food is based on the protein
meal, with very little "chicken" to be found.
This
has become a very popular marketing gimmick, even in premium and
"health food" type brands. Since just about everybody is now using it,
any meaning it may have had is so watered-down that you may just as
well ignore it.
5. Special ingredient claims. Many
of the high-end pet foods today rely on the marketing appeal of
people-food ingredients such as fruits, herbs, and vegetables.
However, the amounts of these items actually present in the food are
tiny; and the items themselves are usually scraps and rejects from
processors of human foods—certainly not the whole, fresh ingredients
they want you to picture. Such ingredients don't provide a significant
health benefit and are really a marketing gimmick.
It's a jungle out there…Pet
food marketing and advertising has become extremely sophisticated over
the last few years. It's important to know what is hype and what is
real, so you can make informed decisions about what to feed your pets.
For more information on what pet food labels really tell you can be found in our article, Selecting a Good Commercial Pet Food.
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