The straight dope on Iams???

Factual Questions
1

Okay, so my beagle is a bit pudgy (but thankfully otherwise very healthy). We asked the vet what to do, as we don’t overfeed her (a cup of Purina One for breakfast, a cup for dinner), we rarely give her any snacks (we got her almost a year ago and still have the original container of Liv-A Snaps)…she’s just lazy…

So…the vet gave us a sample of Iams weight loss formula, which we’re supposed to give her 1.75 cup of every day.

Now…here’s the thing…I’ve used Iams on previous dogs and never had any problems. But recently I’m reading horror stories about Iams…anything ranging from how the ingredients aren’t as natural as they claim to how Iams actually made someone’s dog near-deathly ill. One claim I saw is that vets recommend it because Iams pays 'em off.

But then I remember the controversy over Hartz’s flea-killing shampoo, to which some dogs and cats have bad reactions to. (Solution: don’t use cheap flea-killing stuff; use FrontLine! Flea powder et al is basically poison, so you have to be careful how you administer it!) And to the point that people boycott Hartz products, despite it boiling down to what’s basically an allergy, really. Hartz’s non-flea stuff, however, has never seemed to have a negative effect…

Anyhoo…the controversy over Iams…is that a similar situation, where SOME dogs might have not had a good experience with it and ergo there’s a mass e-mail campaign against it?? Is there some reliable, unbiased third-party data out there???

2

IAMS is practically inedible. Pet store owners should really be in jail for carrying it.

I think that about sums up the objections to basic pet food. There is nothing wrong with it, but people that sell the more expensive stuff want to make you think there is. Any pet can have an unusual reaction to any pet food no matter how much it costs. IAMS is as far as I know, a middle of the road brand.

IANAV, so obviously any veterinarian can trump my opinion. I’ve had many cats, and they all lived long lives despite being fed store brand dry food. If our cats were overweight, we fed them less of the same stuff.

3

IAMS sells bazillions of bags of dog food, so obviously there are a hell of a lot of dogs out there eating it with no ill effects. Every once in a while you’ll find a dog with weird allergic reactions or picky taste, but the vast majority of them will happily chow down anything that even slightly resembles food.

4

Your pet food you should say “complete and balanced” and “approved by the AAFCO”

Iams is controversial because they allegedly mistreat the animals they test their food on.

I personally would reccomend Hills’ Science Diet.

5

Another widely despised brand :). Really. Internet cat people at least hate Hills’ and ascribe a purported widespread ignorance of nutritional science among U.S. vets to the fact ( purported ) that most vet schools have minimal nutrition training and what little is done is seminars from industry reps, primarily Hills.

Almost all pet food on the market has been certified as being a complete nutritional package, satisfactory for feeding your pet on a daily basis. But de facto they tend to break down into three categories:

1.) Standard - Stuff like Purina or Alpo. Cheap pet food with a lot of carbohydrate fillers ( primarily corn ) and made from crappy killing room floor leftovers. This meets federal standards and most people feed their animals this stuff for decades without ill effect. I did for one cat for 17 years.

2.) Premium - Stuff like Iams, Hills, Royal Canin. More and occasionally better cuts of meat. Still use cheap carb fillers, but maybe not as much of them. Premium price.

3.) Ultra-Premium - Stuff like Wellness, Canidae/Felidae, Innova. Meat ingredients from higher quality sources. Meat as primary ingredient, rather than carb fillers, protein contents usually higher ( in cat food at least ). “No grains”, meaning generally no wheat or corn fillers, but rather utilizing more digestible sources like rice or potatoes for carbohydrates. A whole array of hippy-looking additives like kelp or blueberries for various purported health benefits. Ultra-premium price.

So the question becomes, are ultra-premium brands worth it? I think the answer kinda depends on your budget. I don’t think anybody should be ashamed to feed “standard” foods - like I said, I did so for 17 years and they meet the minimum standards listed for a healthy diet.

However I do feed only ultra-premium brands now and I’ll say one noticeable difference is coat health. My current cats have noticeably softer and shinier fur. When a friend switched to ultra-premium dog food the difference in coat softness was noticeable within two weeks. In addition corn and wheat are among the most common food allergies in pets - granted this may not be a common issue, but it does occur and can thus be avoided. Less indigestible filler = ( supposedly ) smaller, less frequent stools and some claim, less smelly ( more a cat thing, perhaps ).

Then there is the homemade food folks, which claim health benefits even beyond the above. Too much work for me :D. But some people swear by it.

6

Yeah, the beautiful thing about the Internet is that you can find horror stories about anything.

Feed your pet the best quality food you can reasonably afford. There is some inverse correlation between spent on food and spent on vet bills - the healthier the animal, the fewer the bills. But don’t bankrupt yourself feeding them better than yourself.

(Oh, and since beagles are such notorious pigs: is your dog getting extra calories while outside? I know lots of dogs who like fruit and will raid the little fallen bits around fruit trees in their neighborhood while out on their regular walks. Or did you perhaps *used *to have a mole problem which has mysteriously resolved itself?)

7

Heh…yeah, once in a while the beagle does suddenly chomp something down that she finds on the ground, but we keep a good eye on her when we have her out…

Regarding the “horror stories about anything” remark – totally agree…just wanted to confirm my beliefs and hopefully get a lead to something neutral…

And of course I’m not taking into account any crumbs that might fall on the floor in the kitchen and mysteriously disappear, how when we’re loading the dishwasher there might be a fork or two that suddenly look very clean, etc… :slight_smile:

8

I feed my dog Nutro natural choice and her coat looks great, nice and shiny. I guess it’s in the premium range.

9

Kinda depends on your pet, too. The Wellness cat food helped our diabetic cat a lot - fewer carbs, more protein, which is very hard to find in a non-ultra-premium food.

Our other cat does fine on medium-range food, though, she’s very healthy - I think it’s science diet, but I always forget and have to check the cans before I go shopping, and we’ve changed foods a few times (pickly little monster).

If I could afford to feed them both the ultra stuff, I would, it generally has less fillers, and the ingredients are identifiable - actually, we were feeding both cats Wellness for awhile, however our local store raised the price on it by quite a lot, so we switched her.

10

There is an opinion in veterinary circles that all pet foods are bad for the animals and (as their websitesuggests) raw meat is best. Viewed by some as the lunatic fringe because of their insistence on a conspiracy between pet food manufacturers, some vets and “fake” animal welfare organisations.

I simply throw this into the mix…

Grim

11

In my experience, the amount recommended on the dog food bags is generally way too much. I feed my 3 year old 70 Rhodesian Ridgeback about 2.5 cups a day, and she is maintaining her weight. The dog food bag says I should be giving her at least 4 cups a day. She’d be really fat on 4 cups a day. She is lazy, but even if she weren’t, she’d be fat on 4 cups a day.

12

Be aware that these trendy ingredients are added to the formula at such small levels as to be unimportant to the diet. Such as 2 pounds to a 2000 lb batch.

It’s called being able to make a ‘label claim’. So the package can say “New, with Kelp!”, or “Antioxidants from blueberries!.” I used to work in the animal feed industry, including formulation and purchasing of ingredients.

People will spend a great deal of money on their pets, I mean companion animals, I mean non-human companions.

And “made from choice cuts of meat” is wrong too. Meat and bone meal is a dry powered protein that comes in various levels of analysis. So you can buy ‘prime’ meat meal, (the good stuff), but that does not mean the same thing as prime does for human food. These are added to the formula based upon the desired final specs. Semi-moist kibbles are made out of dry products with moisture and oils added formed though an extruder so they look like a chunk of meat, they aren’t. Canned moist feeds are made out of whatever is unfit for human consumption, think of what is rejected from the hot dog line.

The other differences are marketing, marketing, marketing.

13

When I was a young lad my mother brought home a German Shepherd mix puppy. From that day on till the day Lucky had to be put down, he was fed the cheapest dog food my could buy plus the table scraps from dinner. Lucky lived almost 19 years. The only thing he would not eat was peas, if any were in his food dish there would be a pile of them on the floor when he finished.

14

The grain of truth behind this is probably the March 2007 incident where several brands of pet food caused illness and death to pets. Within a few months, over 8,500 pets had been reported as dying from this food, with many more reporting kidney failure. (Only a few cases have had actual proof of this, since most dogs & cats are not autopsied.)

The problem was traced to a Chinese manufacturer or wheat
gluten, who had doped the product with melamine, a coal-based additive that causes the product to show higher levels of protein in tests, and thus sell for a higher price. Later, similar doping was found in Chinese rice & corn gluten products.

Most of the contaminated pet food was produced by Menu Foods, Inc. of Ontario Canada, which manufactures pet foods for about 100 different brands. It produces pet food for 17 of the 20 largest retailers in North America, and 5 of the 6 largest brand names. Over 50 brands of dog food, and over 40 brands of cat food issued recalls of their products.

Iams was one of the brands that caused pet deaths in this incident. (All Iams canned pet food is actually produced by Menu Foods.) Others included Hills, Natural Balance, Royal Canin, Doctor’s, Select Kitty, Alpo, etc.

It was interesting to me to see that Premium brands like Iams & Hills are coming from the same factory as basic brands like Alpo, and the WalMart & CostCo brands. It confirmed my opinion that these ‘premium’ brands are not worth the extra money.

15

Did you even read that link???

16

A little more on feed formulation:

Every feed stuff (ingredient) has a proximate (basic) analysis for protein, moisture, fat and ash. With the Chinese melamine incident, added melanine causes the proxmate analysis to show a higher level of protein than is acutally in the feed stuff. Feed stuffs are sold on a protein unit based price, so if you can game that system and get a higher proximate analysis on the protein in your product, you get a higher price on the commodities market. This was a failure of the commodities buyers more than of the feed manufacturers. Protein is the major driver for the price and the Chinese were selling false protein.

Feed manufacturers use a formulation program where the parameters for the animal diet are set by a nutritionist or team of nutritionists, almost always PhD’s in their area. The nutritionist sets minimum and maximum values for the proximate analysis of the end feed and a long list of amino acids, vitamins and minerals down to some very minor things.

Some values are set firm with both a minimum and maximum value. Others are set with a value that may be only a minimum or a maximum. Too much of one thing may be bad for health but less is fine, so a maximum value is set. Some things may have a necessary minimum and more isn’t harmful so only a minimum is locked in.

A feed plant will have a silo farm with several large storage tanks of the major ingredients, such as meat and bone meal, fish meal, corn or wheat gluten, distiller’s grains, cereal byproducts, tallow, fish oil etc. Minor bins with blood meal, salt, sugar, etc. And micro bins with vitamin and mineral premixes, binders and texturing agents.

The analysis of the ingredients available for production today are entered into the formulation program and the computer creates a formula to be sent to the production dept. The production people may review the formula and say, ‘this won’t run, I need more potato powder to bind it together and less added oil.’ So another ingredient is increased and one reduced. The end result is that every batch will come out with the same nutritional analysis even if the ingredients vary. And the customer gets a consistent product. This does not mean that each batch of feed is made from the same things, only that the analysis will be the same and the results to the animal should be the same.

The reason your pet loves to eat the food has to do with flavors that are usually top-coated on the finished feed. These flavors are usually chicken based, sometimes fish based. For dry flavors imagine the base feed rolled in something like dry chicken soup mix. Liquid flavors are also available and are like a thin soup that is sprayed on the feed. Fluffy is not going to eat the dry food without an added flavor.

The flavors are tested in kennels of dogs and cats that are usually rescued from local shelters who would otherwise be put down. Bowl A with the new flavor & bowl B with a control flavor. ‘Well he ate all of bowl A but he kick bowl B over and pissed on it.” Such is science.

17

You posted this while I was composing my post above. You are right on. Menu Foods produces many of the major pet foods in North American, I think they are one of the biggest. Do you really think that when you walk down the aisle at the supermarket in your hometown that there are individual, distinct companies making all these products? Nope, there are 4-5 real players making feed for all the various markets. Different packages, different marketing, same stuff.

18

Yet a perusal of pet food labels would suggest otherwise. Not just in terms of micro-ingredients ( some of which sounds dubious to me as well ), but differing levels of proteins and fats, use or non-use of certain grains ( and a varying carbohydrate count ), whether or not “meat by-products” are used ( which is defined differently under labeling laws and it is argued has a different usable protein profile than “meat” ), etc.

So while most cat food may indeed come from massive factories that spew out 30 brands, my understanding is formulations can be rather different and are kept seperate.

19

Yes, you yourself could start a custom cat food business of your own. And have very specific requirements and nutritional profiles. So you take your new idea where? You can’t make it on your own. Many of the specialty diets are made in the same plants. Or else you need several million dollars to build a plant of your own.

With available production capacity much cheaper, you just have one of the already operating plants make the food. The diet will be what you say, but the ingredients will be the same as everyone else. And if there is a problem with an ingredient, you have the same problem. All the commodities are bought from the same market.

You control the spec, but you control the ingredients only if you control the plant.

20

I’ve only had one vet in my life not recommend what they sold. Needless to say, I was more likely to believe him. I had a puppy that was severely undernourished and abused. He said if she lived the next two days, she’d probably make it. He recommended I feed her Ol’ Roy high protein. I did. She was never underweight again and lived (through many death sentences) to the ripe old age of 16.

That pet food problem a few years ago cracked me up. All these folks spending a fortune on food that “can only be bought at a veterinarian,” on the same recall list as Walmart pet food. It broke my heart about the pets, but I honestly thought it might have wizened people up about processed food. Sure, there are better foods than others, but if you think about how our chicken is processed, then wonder how careful they might be about pet food? Hell, I’d be happy if the plant managers weren’t defecating in the vats.