I would like others opinion on healty quality dog food. I have a two
year old chihauhau. i have been feeding her nutro. It claims to be all
natural.also i sometimes give her bill-jac. I find all those ingredient
labels so confusing.

Patrick Mchale wrote:
I would like others opinion on healty quality dog food. I have a two
year old chihauhau. i have been feeding her nutro. It claims to be all
natural.also i sometimes give her bill-jac. I find all those ingredient
labels so confusing.


read in here what vet dr jane bics has to say about dog foods, you
will be surprised.

http://www.healthypetnet.com/home.asp?realname=10084544

skibbles wrote:
Patrick Mchale wrote:
I would like others opinion on healty quality dog food. I have a two
year old chihauhau. i have been feeding her nutro. It claims to be all
natural.also i sometimes give her bill-jac. I find all those ingredient
labels so confusing.


read in here what vet dr jane bics has to say about dog foods, you
will be surprised.


A lot of the information presented is misleading or flat out wrong.
Not to mention, this product is part of MLM.

Any pet food can claim to be "all natural". That term is not
regulated. You can't accurately judge the quality of a pet food based
off of the ingredient list. Beware of companies that play the
marketing game of selling their foods based off of fear of ingredients.
Those companies are simply selling you dog food and are not concerned
with nutrition. Nutrients are more important than ingredients.
Ingredient lists are subject to marketing games. Ask your veterinarian
for their opinion.

In article .com,
wrote:
Any pet food can claim to be "all natural". That term is not
regulated. You can't accurately judge the quality of a pet food based
off of the ingredient list.

What you keep not bothering to point out is that an
ingredients list *is* a necessary piece of information, even
though by itself it's insufficient to tell you everything
you need to know about a particular food. Sure, you have to
know how to read it, but you have to know how to read the
nutitional information, as well, if you're not going to be
snookered.

Beware of companies that play the
marketing game of selling their foods based off of fear of ingredients.

Look, dog food companies play stupid games around nutrients
and micronutrients, too (for example, claiming that their
dog food is good for dogs with joint problems because it's
got chondroitin in it, even though there's insufficient
levels of chondroitin to actually help).

Those companies are simply selling you dog food and are not concerned
with nutrition. Nutrients are more important than ingredients.

Not really. The overall nutritional value of the food is
what's important, and poor quality ingredients can provide
poor nutritional availability.

To the original poster: what this guy isn't telling you is
that he works for Hill's (Science Diet) and he's here to
flog their food. What he is telling you is just
regurgitated Hill's marketing material.
--
Melinda Shore - Software longa, hardware brevis -

Since George Bush took office, foreign lenders have been
the source for over 80% of US government borrowing

Melinda Shore wrote:
In article .com,
wrote:
Any pet food can claim to be "all natural". That term is not
regulated. You can't accurately judge the quality of a pet food based
off of the ingredient list.

What you keep not bothering to point out is that an
ingredients list *is* a necessary piece of information, even
though by itself it's insufficient to tell you everything
you need to know about a particular food. Sure, you have to
know how to read it, but you have to know how to read the
nutitional information, as well, if you're not going to be
snookered.


The major problem is that no one can tell what the QUALITY of any given
ingredient is. There are lots of people who will pretend to know about
the quality of ingredients, but there is no way for them to
know....it's all about marketing.


Not really. The overall nutritional value of the food is
what's important, and poor quality ingredients can provide
poor nutritional availability.

Please tell us exactly how YOU KNOW the difference between "poor
quality ingredients" and "high quality" ingredients from looking at a
dog food label? You don't. As long as you want to focus solely on
ingredients and less on nutrition, you're going to be duped time and
time again.


To the original poster: what this guy isn't telling you is
that he works for Hill's (Science Diet) and he's here to
flog their food. What he is telling you is just
regurgitated Hill's marketing material.
--

Where have I promoted Hill's in this thread at all? As for my
regurgitating "marketing material", you just got done spending the
majority of this post agreeeing with almost everything I said!

In article .com,
wrote:
The major problem is that no one can tell what the QUALITY of any given
ingredient is.

That's not a major problem, that's a minor problem. The
ingredients themselves are important, and knowing what's in
the food is necessary to being able to evaluate the food.
Ingredients should be palatable, have high nutritional
availability, and be digestible. Filler is empty calories -
it's going to pass right through and may undermine digestive
health. The notion that you shouldn't care about what you
stick in your dog's stomach and that you shouldn't care
about what you ask your dog's digestive system to work on is
just as bogus as the notion that you shouldn't care about
what you stick in your own gullet.

As long as you want to focus solely on
ingredients and less on nutrition, you're going to be duped time and
time again.

That's a pretty good example of dishonest argumentation. I
don't focus solely on ingredients. I also don't focus
on nutrition to the exclusion of ingredients. Your "don't
look at the ingredients" schtick is yet another example of
you failing to understand something you've read and
consequently getting it wrong. I think you'd be very, very
hard-pressed indeed to find a nutritionist, human or
veterinary, who says that ingredients don't matter.

In the meantime, for a laugh find someone of middling or
better intelligence and ask them what it communicates when a
dog food company employee tells consumers not to look at at
the ingredients in dog food.
--
Melinda Shore - Software longa, hardware brevis -

Let's start racial profiling tax cheaters.

Melinda Shore wrote:
In article .com,
wrote:
The major problem is that no one can tell what the QUALITY of any given
ingredient is.

That's not a major problem, that's a minor problem. The
ingredients themselves are important, and knowing what's in
the food is necessary to being able to evaluate the food.


Let's try something here to illustrate the point. Please tell us which
of the ingredients below is best

1. Chicken


2. Chicken

So is number 1 better than number 2? You can't tell of course. Placing
any weight at all on ingredients is just setting yourself up to be
fooled by the Madsion Ave marketing gimmicks. Both of the two
ingredient sabove could be identical, or one could be substantially
betteer for your pet. Unless you dig in a bit deeper and take a look at
teh nutrients you have no clue which chicken is the better chicken.


I think you'd be very, very hard-pressed indeed to find a nutritionist, human or veterinary, who says that ingredients don't matter.

That would be a bet you would lose with any boarded diplomate of the
American College of Veterinary Nutrition. Ingredients are only
carriers, a choice between using trains or trucks to carry a given
nutrient. The quality of the nutrient contained in the transport device
is far more important than the transport device used to get it there. I
deal with university research and veterinary school veterinary
educators on nearly a daily basis who call and ask for very esoteric
information - in three years not one of them has ever asked for the
ingredient list.

gaubster wrote:


Any pet food can claim to be "all natural". That term is not
regulated. You can't accurately judge the quality of a pet food based
off of the ingredient list. Beware of companies that play the
marketing game of selling their foods based off of fear of ingredients.

Those companies are simply selling you dog food and are not concerned
with nutrition. Nutrients are more important than ingredients.
Ingredient lists are subject to marketing games. Ask your veterinarian

for their opinion.


Didn't Hill's use the old shoe leather and motor oil handout in the
past trying to show that guaranteed analysis could pretty much be
reached by just about anything and didn't mean much?
To the OP, if it ain't broke why fix it?

Beth

In article .com,
Steve Crane wrote:
So is number 1 better than number 2? You can't tell of course.

Of course you can't. But that's a pretty dishonest
question. The real choices are between

1) Chicken

2) Corn

or

1) Chicken

2) Chicken by-products.

And those difference matter when it comes to things like
digestibility, palatability, nutrient availability, and so
on.

Placing
any weight at all on ingredients is just setting yourself up to be
fooled by the Madsion Ave marketing gimmicks.

You could say precisely the same thing about relying on
information about additives. And the more filler you've got
in your feed, the more you need to rely on additives, which
takes us back to square 1 on the "somebody could be lying"
board game.

That would be a bet you would lose with any boarded diplomate of the
American College of Veterinary Nutrition. Ingredients are only
carriers, a choice between using trains or trucks to carry a given
nutrient.

That's stupid on the face of it. Dogs have digestive
problems all the time, and the problem is the metabolization
of the ingredients, not problems with the nutrients.

I just pulled out "Performance Dog Nutrition" by Jocelynn
Jacobs and browsed through it, and she emphasizes ingredient
quality as the primary component of digestibility. I know
Arleigh Reynolds does the same.

Is "ingredients don't matter" really the Hill's party line?
If I asked, would your marketing department back you up on
this?
--
Melinda Shore - Software longa, hardware brevis -

Let's start racial profiling tax cheaters.

Melinda Shore wrote:
In article .com,
wrote:
The major problem is that no one can tell what the QUALITY of any given
ingredient is.

That's not a major problem, that's a minor problem.

I know you like to argue for the sake of argument, but come on. If I
stated that 2 + 2 = 4, you'd argue something to the contrary.

The
ingredients themselves are important, and knowing what's in
the food is necessary to being able to evaluate the food.
Ingredients should be palatable, have high nutritional
availability, and be digestible. Filler is empty calories -
it's going to pass right through and may undermine digestive
health. The notion that you shouldn't care about what you
stick in your dog's stomach and that you shouldn't care
about what you ask your dog's digestive system to work on is
just as bogus as the notion that you shouldn't care about
what you stick in your own gullet.

You're assuming things again, Melinda. I didn't say that ingredients
in pet foods "don't matter". I stated that you cannot accurately judge
the quality of a food based solely on looking at the ingredient list.


As long as you want to focus solely on
ingredients and less on nutrition, you're going to be duped time and
time again.

See? That's what I said. And I didn't specifically mean, YOU,
Melinda. I was speaking in general terms.

In the meantime, for a laugh find someone of middling or
better intelligence and ask them what it communicates when a
dog food company employee tells consumers not to look at at
the ingredients in dog food.

You, yourself, are using dishonest argumentation.