Dog Food Test - Is My Dog Food Good? | Alpenwuff Guide

The feed declaration , in accordance with legal requirements, discloses the type of feed, its composition, analytical components, and additives used in the respective feed. This gives you a first impression of what the feed actually contains. However, manufacturers are free to decide how detailed and transparently they disclose the individual ingredients.

Dog food can be labeled "open," "semi-open," or "closed." A closed label only lists categories of ingredients, while an open label provides detailed percentages of each ingredient. To truly understand a food, we believe an open label is essential, allowing for a precise understanding of the ingredients and their proportions. We therefore consider it a sign of quality that the quantities of the ingredients and the ingredients themselves are openly disclosed .

In addition to the level of transparency, the ingredients themselves should also be examined to evaluate a food. The composition lists the ingredients in descending order, analogous to the proportion of the ingredient in the food. Therefore, the first information in the composition is particularly interesting. For example, if you have purchased a "lamb" food, lamb should be among the first ingredients and not grain or another meat protein. The further back the lamb is listed, the less lamb is actually contained in your "lamb food." You can also see from the composition whether cheaper fillers such as sugar beet pulp, animal meal, or dairy products are used. If you are looking for a grain-free food, the food should not contain wheat, spelt, oats, rye, barley, corn, rice, or millet.

In addition to the composition, the analytical constituents are also important. The crude fiber content of dry foods should be between 2% and 4%, the crude ash content below 10%, the crude protein content above 18%, and the crude fat content above 5%. The optimal calcium-to-phosphorus ratio in the analytical constituents should be between 1.1 and 1.9.

Finally, the additives list gives you an overview of whether artificial or chemical additives have been added. Artificial colors, fragrances, flavors, and preservatives are often used in dog food as attractants and to extend shelf life. While many dogs find them irresistible, these substances are unnatural and can have health effects on your furry friend.

In the second step of the feed analysis, special attention should be paid to the raw materials used.

On the one hand, this raises the question of which and how much meat is used in dry food. A good food is characterized by a high meat content and a precise description of the meat used. The meat should be human-grade, and animal by-products should be avoided. However, this is often a trick. When evaluating dry food, it is therefore important to read the meat information carefully, as the spelling, in particular, can make enormous differences. We would like to briefly explain the meaning of different spellings below using the lamb example:

• Fresh lamb : Indicates that fresh muscle meat from the lamb is used
• Fresh lamb : Indicates that fresh muscle meat, but possibly also other parts of the lamb, e.g. offal and by-products such as claws, hooves, carcass or feather meal are processed
• Dried lamb meat / Lamb meat meal : Indicates that muscle meat from lamb is dried and ground and then processed into dog food
• Lamb meal : Indicates that fresh muscle meat, but possibly also other parts of the lamb, e.g. offal and by-products such as claws, hooves, carcass or feather meal are processed
• Meat and animal by-products (including lamb) : It is unclear which animal is contained in the feed and in what quantities. It is only clear that a portion of lamb is included. However, it is unclear whether this is muscle meat, offal, or by-products.
• Animal meal, meat meal, processed animal protein, dried protein, animal protein : Dried and ground slaughterhouse waste products from various animal species are mixed together and processed

We recommend paying attention to transparent labeling of animal protein and high-quality muscle meat . This means your food should contain either fresh animal meat or animal meat meal. It's important that the word "meat" is clearly recognizable and can be clearly assigned to specific animal species.

In addition to a close examination of the meat used, the question of the origin of the raw materials also arises. Feed manufacturers often do not disclose the origin of their ingredients. We recommend asking the manufacturer in this case. If the meat or other ingredients are sourced from third countries or from countries outside the EU, quality control is often only possible to a limited extent. Regulations vary widely, and genetically modified raw materials or hormone-treated feed may be present.

Another aspect to consider when evaluating dog food is the manufacturing process. Most conventional dog foods are heated to up to 200 degrees Celsius during the manufacturing process and pressed into their shape under high pressure. This process is called extrusion—they create extrudates .

During the extrusion of dry dog ​​food , valuable natural nutrients are burned and evaporated, and air pockets form in the food pellets. These burned nutrients are usually subsequently added back to the extruded products through artificial additives to ensure the food meets the dog's nutritional needs. Chemical antioxidants and preservatives in extruded foods ensure a long shelf life. The air in the extruded products also causes the food pellets to absorb water and swell considerably.

An alternative manufacturing process for dry dog ​​food is cold-pressing . In this process, the ground raw materials are mixed with water to form a food mass and then gently pressed into pellets at low temperatures of up to 60 degrees Celsius. These low temperatures preserve nutrients such as vitamins more effectively in their natural form. Furthermore, the high nutrient density of cold-pressed dry food prevents the pellets from becoming saturated when soaked in water.

Cold-pressed dog food breaks down into a powder and therefore doesn't remove water from the dog's stomach, unlike extruded products. If your dog is at increased risk of gastric torsion, cold-pressed food is recommended. However, cold-pressed food may lead to increased stool production due to its high nutrient density and crude fiber content.

When evaluating food, it is important that you are aware of the manufacturing process and decide together with your furry friend what works best for you.

Another aspect to consider when evaluating a food is the price-performance ratio . By comparing similar foods from other manufacturers, as well as your previous analysis of the label, raw materials, and manufacturing process, you can get a sense of whether the price of a food is reasonable.

Finally, it's worth looking behind the colorful pictures on the packaging. Who is actually behind a food brand? Often, larger companies that offer a wide range of different foods hide behind the common food brands on the shelves. With such brand conglomerates , our experience has shown that, due to company-wide, cross-brand corporate goals, sales are more important than the well-being and healthy, genuinely high-quality nutrition of the furry friends. Many large brand conglomerates also lag behind in terms of sustainability, as these companies often prioritize the mass of customers over individuality.

If a smaller company is behind the food, however, the question arises as to who the people behind the food are, what their motivation and expertise are, and what experiences other furry friends have had with the company. On these companies' websites, you'll usually find an "About Us" page and customer reviews that can give you an idea.

After your more theoretical analysis of the five aspects, the next step is to conduct a practical quality control experiment. The water test will show you in detail how the food behaves in the dog's stomach.

To do this, fill a few kibbles into a glass and pour lukewarm water over them. Now you can observe the first quality check: Does the kibble rise to the surface of the water? Or does it stay at the bottom? High-quality kibble stays at the bottom because it doesn't have air holes or cheap, floating fillers.

Now we move on to phase two of the experiment. Wait 30 to 60 minutes and give the food time to settle. Because in a dog's stomach, too, the food initially sits in the intestine after eating. What do you observe after letting the food sit for a while?

High-quality, cold-pressed dog food breaks down into its components like sand and settles at the bottom of the jar . This allows the intestines to process the nutrients quickly and digest them quickly. Inferior dog food, on the other hand, draws the water out of the jar, swells considerably, and doubles in size. If this happens in the dog's stomach, it results in the typical bloated belly, and the digestion process can be delayed.

Now that we have shown you how we form an opinion about different foods, we would like to summarize what we consider to be good food.