How To Read The Ingredient List Of Kibbles

[Ilghaus]

Meat vs. Meal
http://canidae.com/ingredients/meatvmeal.html


Quote:
What does the real difference mean to your pets and you?

Meat
[Chicken & Lamb are 70% water and only 15% protein]
Pet food labels found in grocery and mass marketers like to use Chicken or Lamb to represent real meat. ?(Containing 70% moisture). This leads you the consumer to believe that their product is meat based. Chicken or lamb meats are heavier than grains prior to cooking. The moisture contained in the meats (70%) is reduced by 2/3rds after the cooking process, leaving the total formula as a grain base food after processing.

vs.
Meal
[Chicken Meal and Lamb Meal are dry and 50% to 65% protein] meat protein!
Canidae Pet foods list Chicken Meal & Turkey meal as the first ingredients. Chicken, Turkey and Lamb meals are dry and are less than 10% moisture and contain 50% - 65% meat proteins. In processing the meat meals do not shrink below the grain weight, producing a true meat based formula for your carnivores.

AAFCO label rules require that, the heaviest to the lightest ingredients be the order on the guaranteed analysis panel, (with or without water content).

[Ilghaus]

BLOAT INO from the 5 year Perdue study
Diet-Related Risk Factors for Gastric Dilatation-Volvulus in Dogs of High Risk Breeds
By Malathi Raghavan, DVM, PhD; Nita Glickman, MS, MPH; George McCabe, PhD; Gary Lantz, DVM; Lawrence T. Glickman, VMD, DrPH

The following is taken from the Perdue University veterinary website.
Quote:
New significant findings included a 2.7-fold (or 170%) increased risk of GDV in dogs that consumed dry foods containing fat among the first four ingredients. The risk of GDV was increased 4.2-fold (or 320%) in dogs that consumed dry foods containing citric acid that were also moistened prior to feeding by owners. Dry foods containing a rendered meat meal with bone among the first four ingredients significantly decreased GDV risk by 53.0%. Approximately 30% of all cases of GDV in this study could be attributed to consumption of dry foods containing fat among their first four ingredients, while 32% could be attributed to consumption of owner-moistened dry foods that also contained citric acid.


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In many discussions there will be pros and cons of feeding kibble and if doing so leads to a higher chance of bloat.
According to this study it is not necessarly the feeding of kibble but what is in the kibble, how much (position on ingredient list), and how kibble is fed. Read the ingredient list of any kibble you feed your dog and know what you are reading. Become an educated consumer.

[magolin]

Part of the problem is kibble is not a particularly natural form of food.  It doesn't matter how good the ingredients are.  Face it, nowhere in the food chain is "kibble" found.  With the lower quality kibbles you're feeding dogs all kinds of bizarre things you wouldn't want to come anywhere near, let alone actually let your dog consume.  Those crazy ingredients are a huge part of why more dogs bloat with kibble.  Dogs fed the higher quality kibbles are being fed better ingrediends (that whole garbage in garbage out adage) and generally have more aware owners so they don't allow the dogs to bolt their food.  Those are a couple of other variables.

I'm not bashing people's choice to feed kibble, just PLEASE know what you're actually feeding your dog.  There are only a handful that don't have horribly disgusting and/or cancer causing ingredients.

Animal Protection Institute's site - What's Really in Pet Food
http://www.api4animals.org/facts?p=359&more=1

This only really gives you part of the picture...they've left out some of the more repulsive elements.  So I don't completely disgust everyone, if you want to know, email me and I'll tell you.

Dogs have the genetic capacity to live to ~25, so why do they only live to be ~15?  Do some research and look up what they get fed.  I'm going the raw route with Diesel (if someone wants a full explanation let me know, I'll give you my arguments for raw), but there are some kibbles out there that, while aren't a dog's natural food, aren't going to cause cancer and all sorts of other weird allergies and problems.