What benefits is a dog getting from a higher priced dog food?
My understanding is that the cheap stuff has more fillers - grains and such.
And I think with all those fillers, you may have to feed them more, and pick up after them more.
We went through about 5 different brands before we found one that didn’t make our dog puke. Fun couple of months.
Depends on the brand. You gotta read the labels.
Generally speaking, cheap dog foods are mainly cornmeal and other grain products. Also generally speaking, the higher the price, the more actual animal protein (“meat byproducts”, “meat meal”) the dog food contains.
However, this is not an across-the-board rule. There are some dog foods that are more expensive simply due to market forces, “whatever the traffic will bear”, etc.
Some of the specialist dog foods, like the lamb and rice allergy diets, are more expensive because lamb and rice are more expensive ingredients than not-for-human-consumption leftover cow bits and wheat middlings.
So a dog won’t intrinsically get a better diet from dog food that is more expensive. All reputable commercial dog food diets that are marketed in the U.S. have passed feeding tests run by the AAFCO and are thus certified to be nutritionally complete.
It’s like asking, “What benefits is my child getting from a higher priced hamburger?” Generally speaking, there are three principles at work:
- You get what you pay for.
- However, producers will charge whatever the traffic will bear for their product, and sometimes those prices reflect only the juxtaposition of producer greed and consumer stupidity, not the actual relative value of the product’s ingredients.
- The alert consumer will inform himself and make his buying decisions accordingly.
Different dogs will thrive on different foods. People who decide to get a premium brand would feel that their dog would be better off with a diet that contained more identifiable meat sources than things like corn or rice.
For an example, here’s two ingredients lists. The first is a store brand, and the second, a premium brand.
Corn, Meat & Bone Meal, Chicken By-Product Meal, Corn Gluten Meal, Animal Fat (Preserved with BHA), Rice, Flaxseed, Oatmeal (Source of Soluble Oat Fiber), Poultry Digest, Beet Pulp, Salt, Dicalcium Phosphate, Calcium Carbonate, Iron Oxide, Vitamin E Supplement, Choline Chloride, Zinc Sulfate, Ferrous Sulfate, L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate (Source of Vitamin C), Niacin, Manganese Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, d-Calcium Pantothenate, Biotin, Sodium Selenite, Vitamin A Supplement, Riboflavin Supplement, Thiamine Mononitrate, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Menadione Dimethylpyrimidinol BisulfIte (Source of Vitamin K Activity), Vitamin B12 Supplement, Potassium Iodide, Cobalt Sulfate, Folic Acid.
Turkey, Chicken, Turkey Meal, Chicken Meal, Potatoes, Herring Meal, Chicken Fat, Natural Flavors, Egg, Apples, Tomatoes, Potassium Chloride Carrots, Vitamins,Cottage Cheese, Minerals, Alfalfa Sprouts, Ascorbic Acid, Dried Chicory Root, Direct-Fed Microbials, Vitamin E Supplement, Lecithin, Rosemary Extract
It’s a little like asking “what’s the difference between a McDonald’s burger and a steakhouse burger?” Well, for one, the second choice has… you know, meat. Same with dog food 
All joking aside, previous posters have it right. Cheap foods = cheap fillers. Whatever the current thinking of dogs as omnivores, it’s not really true. They’re opportunists and will eat whatever they can get, but biologically speaking they’re designed to thrive on animal protein. The structure of their digestive tract, their jaw structure and dentition, the very fact that they lack the enzymes necessary to break down starch and cellulose points to carnivore status.
The point is, they can survive eating foods packed with corn meal, but they won’t thrive. Though some dogs do just fine on cheap foods, others have dull, dry coats that shed in huge volume, poop mountainous loads of waste because they don’t digest any of the corn, have gunky yellow teeth, age quickly and die fairly young.
NajaPop is a DVM and is fond of Science Diet–a pricey food marketed by Hill’s exclusively to and through vets but which for a few years had the same ingredients list as the cheapified grocery store version of Iams and now though the ingredients list has changed slightly, the amount and source of corn and meat are roughly the same.
Point being, their back yard is filled with huge piles of smelly waste that they’re constantly picking up. It’s astounding the volume that dog produces. Mine goes once a day, and if I don’t get around to picking it up until mid-week, it’s dried and crumbled to dust anyway. The difference is my dog eats a small volume of food and utilizes all of it.
As with anything else, you mostly get what you pay for, though it’s wise to take a look at the ingredients list. Science Diet is one of the most expensive out there, and it’s total crap.
Whaa? is this really because of diet? I am truly in awe.
Science Diet now makes a Nature’s Best version, which still has some chemicals but is moving in the right direction.
By the way, I don’t know what Dick Van Patten knows about dogs’ taste buds, but I tried Natural Balance on the adult on a whim one day. My dogs are crazy for it! I’m nearly bowled over if I’m slow putting the bowls down in the morning, and they’re both always trying to snatch it out of my hands and fighting over the last morsel in the bowls. (The adult gets the roll, and the puppy gets the normal wet food, but they both want both.)
I recommended it to my neighbor, and her dogs are just as wild for it. She was excited to find that when she started putting it over dry food is the first time her older dog has submitted to eating dry food in a year.
I’m currently taste testing the cats on the wet food. They didn’t eat much of it yesterday, but they’re cautious about change. I’m giving it until tomorrow before switching back to Fancy Feast.
When I first got my Welsh Terrier, Maxwell Edison, the breeder recommended Iams Eukanuba, partly for the “compact, solid stool” the dogs put out. She raised Welshies and Airedales, so cleanup was a big concern. Max lived about 7 years past the average for his breed, on Eukanuba, dry treats, and no people food.
Whatever brand you choose, the important things are that your dog is healthy, and that she doesn’t get fat. My vet of many years is appalled at how many obese dogs he sees every day. You don’t need a special scale to weigh your dog, if you can pick him up. Just weigh yourself, then weigh both of you. Do the math. If a yummy new food makes him gain weight, that’s bad. Fat dogs die young. Don’t take my word for it, ask your vet.
Whole Dog Journal’s Recommended Foods
They also asked companies where their foods were manufactured, no doubt inspired by the mass pet deaths of last year.
I’d like to add dogs on lower quality food can experience dog flatulence issues - which is worth a pretty penny to avoid, as it truly is an awful smell.
Yes! I swear, you can’t write an endorsement better than “my dog hardly poops at all”
I feed my beasties Nutra-Nuggets Lamb & Rice, which runs me about $18 per 40 lb bag at the local Fred Meyer. Small poops, very little flatulence and very shiny coats on both of them. They like the flavor, too. The glucosamine/chondroitin supplement is very welcome for the Malemute who was badly nourished for her first year and a half before I got her and who has joint problems as a result.
Just a note that Costco’s brand (Kirkland) is manufactured by Diamond, which is on the Whole Dog Journal list of foods. So it’s good and cheap - $18 for a 40 lb bag.
Nutra-Nuggets is also a Diamond manufactured product like Kirkland, so there you go! I originally bought Nutra-Nuggets at Costco but I don’t have a membership now so I’m glad I can pick it up at Freddie’s. Which is owned by Kroger’s for those outside the PNW–it might be available through Kroger’s stores as well. Cheap but good and the doggies dig it. The cat does too, but he’s a mutant… :smack:
**Spartydog **sez:
Depends on the dog, even with the premium stuff. Had a friend that thrived on Nutro. Tried it and just couldn’t get used to it. Vomiting and indigestion.
Switched to Eukanuba and no problem. Feeding time is heaven. Go figure!
When the Chinese were poisoning our dog and cat foods , the place that was making them made like 60 brands at one factory. Were they different when they charged more? Were they better? I do not know but I am skeptical.
Van Patten makes pressed dog food in tubes. My dogs think it is crack. They WILL get it every night or make it sure you will be miserable. Beagles do not suffer disappointment in peace.
They were different foods that share one single ingredient, but were different recipes. Probably some brands had more amount of it than others (wheat gluten, wasn’t it?). IIRC, some of them were “prescription diets”, meaning that they had to be sold under supervision of a veterinarian. Others were general run of the mill commercial diets sold in the supermarkets.
Like I said, all they had in common was that they charged one ingredient and were packaged in the same plant. They probably had different recipes and different amounts of the ingredients.
That’s the Natural Balance stuff I mentioned above. Crack indeed, and yes, the puppy (beagle mix) does not suffer deprivation in silence.