Digestible Bites of Short and Snappy Facts

L'il Bite of the Day - Sometimes Chicken Isn't Exactly Chicken

9/21/2013

In our house, rabbit means rabbit. No tricks.

It's useful to sharpen your translation skills in understanding what the NAME on the label of a cat food product actually means. You might be surprised to know that:

AAFCO rules dictate that a product labeled "chicken food" must have at least 95 percent chicken on a dry matter basis (DMB). If the food is named "chicken dinner" or "chicken feast," then the requirement drops down to 25 percent.

If you see the word "with" in the name - "Cat Food With Rabbit" then the food only has to have 3 percent of the ingredient derived from rabbit.

There is no requirement that manufacturers label all sources of animal protein in the name - it's possible, for example, that fish is in a cat food but that nothing on the front of the label reflects that. "Cat Food With Rabbit" could be mostly fish so long as 3 percent of the food came from rabbit.

The FDA and AAFCO give pet food manufacturers very wide berth, time-wise, when it comes to adjusting ingredient labels to reflect changed formulations. You really have no guarantee that the food in the can or bag precisely matches the ingredients listed on the label.

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L'il Bite of the Day - Ingredient Splitting

9/5/2013

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Mainly meat? Not hardly.

Be savvy about "ingredient splitting" tactics on food labels.

Ingredients in pet food are listed on the label in descending order by weight - and while this means you should always look for meat as a first ingredient in a diet for a carnivore, you're not quite done yet!

Take a peek at the main ingredient list for a popular dry food for cats:

Chicken, Whole Grain Wheat, Corn Gluten Meal, Pork Fat, Brewers Rice , Wheat Gluten, Chicken Liver Flavor, Dried Beet Pulp, yada yada yada . . .

If you focused solely on the first ingredient, you might assume you're golden. But add ALL of the grain sources together? You'll see that collectively they add up to a greater overall quantity of grain in the food than actual meat-based ingredient.

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L'il Bite of the Day - Sometimes Chicken Isn't Exactly Chicken

L'il Bite of the Day - Ingredient Splitting

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