Beneful dog food.

In My Humble Opinion
21

My doggies love the Simply Nourish brand. Chicken and Brown rice. It is a little more expensive, but they really love it, and I know it’s good for them. It’s $26 for a 15 pound bag at Petsmart, but I buy it on sale. My dogs are small so that lasts a long time.

These are the ingredients:

Chicken, Chicken Meal, Brown Rice, Oatmeal, Brown Rice Flour, Tomato Pomace, Canola Oil (preserved with mixed tocopherols), Natural Flavor, Flaxseed, Dried Chicory Root, Dried Carrots, Dried Spinach, Dried Sweet Potato, Dried Pumpkin, Dried Blueberries, Vitamins (Vitamin E Supplement, L-ascorbyl-polyphosphate, Niacin, Vitamin A Supplement, D-Calcium Pantothenate, Riboflavin, Vitamin D Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Thiamine Mononitrate, Folic Acid, Biotin, Vitamin B12 Supplement), Minerals (Zinc Sulfate, Ferric Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, Manganese Sulfate, Calcium Iodate, Sodium Selenite), Choline Chloride

They also get 2 treats per day each, that contain glucosamine and chondroitin.

22

I feed my dog the Kirkland food from Costco. I alternate between the salmon and turkey grain free.

Both Kirkland and Taste of the Wild come out of the same Diamond factories. There is good reason to believe they are the same food.

23

Given that you’re still owned by setters, wouldn’t be relevant question be: What are your setters feeding you? :slight_smile:

24

I always found the notion that you can’t switch a dog’s food to be odd. They are omnivores, and opportunistic feeders. And they like to eat cat poop covered in litter (kitty roca!)

That said, when my dogs were alive, my schnauzer had problems with corn based foods. She would get horrible skin lesions. Once we figured out it was the corn and switched to rice based foods, her skin cleared up and never had the breakouts and hotspots again. I was feeding Iams. But then, IIRC Iams and Science Diet both had issues a few years ago when there was the big dog food scare.

My last dog, I cooked for. I made a recipe that I found online and the vet approved. He was a small dog and I cooked large batches. I could make and freeze enough so I only hade to do it every ten days. It was a PITA, but given all the hype at the time about the bad dog food that was out there, and not living in an area where we had boutique choices, home cooked made sense.

25

Whole Dog Journal does a very thorough review of canned and dry dog food; it’s available online.

Dog Food Advisor will send you an e-mail whenever a dog food is recalled.

I think I found out about chewy.com on this board. I’ve just placed my first order with them and their customer service is wonderful.

In two years I’ve gone through Dr. Tim’s; Science Diet; Fromm (5 stars); Royal Canin low fat. My guy would be ok for a few months on each of these, then get sick. Even the Royal Canin caused problems. So mostly I cook for him but am hoping to find a kibble he can tolerate. I’m just starting with Annamaet lean (5 stars).

26

Here is a news storyon the current lawsuit.

We feed our dog a combo of the Costco Salmon and Royal Canin (“Royal Pain-in”)urinary food. The latter is expensive, but the vet says he needs it, and we use the former to extend (vet OK’s this).

27

Our pug eats a mixture of Beneful and a couple of spoonsful of Alpo wet food all mixed together. She also begs from my husband (I don’t feed her from my plate) and she gets occasional dog treats. And if I forget to close the door to the basement, she gets into the cat box. She’s perfectly healthy, if slightly psycho, and she’s a rare specimen of a trim pug.

I won’t buy generic dog food, but I also won’t spend half my grocery budget on dog and cat food. They all seem to be doing fine with what I buy.

28

Another Taste of the Wild fan here. My dogs love it and the one with the sensitive stomach has done very, very well since switching. Both of their coats are ridiculously soft and they’re happy, active guys.

Grocery store dog food is sort of like feeding your kids nothing but Lucky Charms and Spam…except with the added risk of real danger from poor quality and/or toxic ingredients.

Someone mentioned Dog Food Adviser up above, and I second the recommendation. It’s a very good resource.

29

They are gracious enough to give me a bite or two out of each meal I make for myself before they start the ‘I’m-a-starving-dog-who-never-eats-and-I-NEEEEEED-that-sandwich’ routine. lol

30

I’ve never understood how someone could read the list of ingredients on a bag of beneful, contrast that with the ingredients pictured on the bag, and what is considered a healthy diet for a dog, and then feed it to an animal they claim to love.

Corn, Wheat Flour, Soy? For meat eaters? Then propylene glycol and sugar? Plus a shit ton of food colour? Sure dogs like it. I like micky dee’s burgers, but I don’t think a steady diet of them is a healthy choice for me, any more than the cheap filler ingredients Purina puts in beneful is for a dog.

But here are people who think this shit is great stuff and happily plunk it down for their dog and defend it as a good nutritious diet. Ignorance fought indeed.

31

A good way to judge a dog food is by going to Petsmart and heading for the dog food aisles. The most expensive (and often the best quality) is on the first aisle, and the aisles decrease in quality and price per aisle, with Purina brands, Pedigree, etc. being in the last aisle.

We used to feed Pedigree but switched to Bil-Jac wet and dry food. The wet food is actual “people” food. Dark meat chicken, green beans, real beef, barley, etc. It’s about midway in the aisle progression and the best we can afford at the moment. We wouldn’t feed Beneful under any circumstances, although a breeder did recommend Purina Pro Plan to me.

One of our dogs did get diarrhea because we switched abruptly. It is best to make a gradual transition. We do feed treats, and they always get a piece of whatever it is I’m eating, provided it has nothing in it that is toxic to dogs.

32

The punchline is that medium-costly dog food is often cheaper than lower-tier stuff, because the dogs eat less of it and poop less of it out, essentially undigested. The promotion to health and weight control that results is indirect savings.

I guess if you have a dog and need to pinch nickels, the best grocery store food you can afford is okay. But anyone who’s serious about their canine really needs to find food that isn’t filler, color, odorants aimed at human nostrils and generally substandard for dog health. You DON’T have to spend much more than you are on “Purina premium” stuff.

33

Propylene glycol is the carrier in my liquid vitamin D. It ain’t working to make anything sweeter. Yeech.

34

Looks like snopes is psychic now:

35

I switched The Boyz (they’re huskies, btw) from Blue to Taste Of The Wild a few months ago on advice of my vet. Blue is very rich and high in protein, and some breeds cannot handle it. I’ve found the simpler the ingredients, the better for their digestion.

We had one of our malamutes on a raw diet a few years back. She thrived very well on it.

36

I agree with your statement that different breeds need different blends. I’ve tried a lot of different product types on my canine guinea pigs and found that they don’t do well on chicken or on rice which are commonly suggested ingredients. They are long, lean animals by nature and incredibly active. The vet advised a high protein mixture and that has proven to be just right for them. They have more energy (a mixed blessing when they can’t get out to run much lol), bright eyes, silky coats, good breath (no doggie halitosis) and no digestive upsets.

I give them salmon treats which they absolutely adore. Mom can’t afford salmon for herself, mind you, but the kiddos get it. :rolleyes:

37

I don’t think you would like to eat the salmon they make dog food out of. Fishermen were getting paid 25 cents a pound for Alaskan humpies (pink salmon) last season.

38

You are quite right. I was thinking more of the wild caught Alaskan King salmon for mom.

39

I am much less concerned about the ingredients than where they come from.

I note that Purina, in its online ‘fact sheet’ about Beneful says that it’s made in two U.S. plants. But it does not mention the source of the ingredients.

I would like to know which foods are made from foreign-sourced ingredients (China in particular) but don’t know of any way to access this information. Not that U.S. ingredients are guaranteed to be unadulterated and safe, but major problems in recent years seem to have involved foreign as opposed to domestic sources.

40

Don’t make any assumptions about the similarity of pet food because it comes from the same plant. There are far, far more brands and makers than there are food plants, so the work is shared and/or subcontracted for all but the largest makers. Most small-brand and specialty foods are made by a contracted plant that might be turning out pure Corn Chow on another line and the finest raw-materials uber-food on another.

So all comments that X must be the same as Y because it comes from the same plant is absolutely completely wrong. It’s possible that a store brand (especially Costco) is another middling-good brand in a different label… but pet food plants turn out batches to order that can be as different as, well, corn and cow.