K9 diet?


#62

Yes, I’ve often wondered that, and I don’t know the answer. It’s annoying for sure. I also don’t know the extent to which you can assume the remainder of the dry matter after subtracting fat, protein, and fiber is digestible carbs. I may have to pull up some labels and see if it holds true.


(Ken) #63

I’d say the food you listed is 80% carbohydrate. Combined with the fat, it’s a massive carb-fat combination.


#64

How did you come up with 80%? After subtracting the 22% protein/fat/fiber and 74% moisture, you have 4% remaining, which once you put through the DMB calculator comes out to about 15.4%. So that’s the maximum it could be.


(Ken) #65

13% protein, 7% fat. They’re the only ingredients with caloric content. That leaves 80% for carbs. Moisture and fiber number are irrelevant since they’re non caloric.


#66

Ah, I see the confusion. That’s not how pet food labelling works, unfortunately it’s not based on calories at all, just mass. Quoting from above (check out the info on the page I linked, it explains further and also has the calculator you can use):

This is entirely why when you look at the numbers on the label of a dry pet food which also comes in a wet food formulation, the numbers are very very different from each other. They account for the water content in the mass percentage.


(Ken) #67

OK, so what do you think is the Carb macro of that food?

True, I don’t see any major Carb sources, I’m much more concerned with dog foods that list things like corn, rice, barley, etc as major ingredients.


(Bunny) #68

What my vet recommends:

Your pup may need vitamin E (1 cut cap) and Omega 3’s (3 cut caps) from fish oils.


#69

If we go with the net carbs, then the most it can be is 4% (as served), and on a dry matter basis in a food that is 74% water that comes out to 15.4% at most. This is where I am unsure if carbs account for all the remaining mass after fat/protein/fiber/moisture have all been accounted for.

Though, the fiber and moisture are listed as “max” values, so there will be some variation.

I hope that makes sense.


(Ken) #70

Pretty confusing, as I don’t see the numbers adding up. I’m referring to the hypothetical 13% protein, 7% fat type food, and with the other numbers how it would translate into the Carb macro.

It almost seems intentionally misleading to me. I’ll have to study your calculator link and see if it makes more sense.


#71

This may explain better than the original link I provided:

Pet food labels suck, I’m not sure how they ended up the way they did. Probably from standards originally intended for food production animals, is my guess. I’ll try one more time, though the Dog Food Advisor page may do a better job than I can.

Protein 13% of mass + Fat 7% of mass + Fiber 2% of mass = 22% of mass accounted for
Water 74% of mass accounted for

So 74% + 22% = 96% of mass accounted for in one way or another on the label. That leaves 4% unaccounted for. I’m not sure if all of this remaining 4% is carbs, but at most digestible carbs by mass can’t be more than that 4%.

When plugged into the calculator, it factors out the water mass so you can see what the carb% is by mass if all the water were removed (i.e. dry matter basis).

Now that I think about it though, as you mentioned, even the dry matter basis doesn’t give a calorie percentage, since as you said fiber doesn’t have any calories, and fat has more calories per gram than protein or carbs. I think for a calorie percentage you’d have to do more math based on the dry matter percentages and the calorie content of the food (which can usually be found on pet food company web sites).

Yeah, pet food labels suck.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #72

@Callisto When the guaranteed analysis lists “ash” content, what are they referring to?


#73

That’s a cat food thing, as far as I know it’s something that’s only listed separately on cat food labels. It’s undigestible material, from a caloric standpoint, but it accounts for the mineral content in meat. I do like the DMB calculator on the FNAE page, but I think the Dog Food Advisor page probably does a better job explaining what DMB is and why it matters.

Ooh, I found a good explanation, it’s on a pet supply store site but it’s still good:


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #74

Glad I asked, thank you. I always wondered, because Harlan lists it on the data sheet for their Teklad Global Rodent Diet #2018, which I feed my rats when I can get it.

It’s interesting that Harlan lists protein, carbohydrate, fat, fiber, ash, and a whole host of other things, whereas Oxbow only lists protein, fat, fiber, calcium, and phosphorus. I suppose it’s because the Harlan data sheet is aimed at experimenters, whereas the Oxbow information appears primarily geared to retail customers.


#75

Yes, I bet you’re right about why they are labelled differently.

@240lbfatloss Ken, I just found that the Dog Food Advisor site, which has ratings for every commercial food out there (albeit based entirely on guaranteed analysis and ingredient lists, since they don’t have the enormous amount of time it would take to evaluate the various other factors like quality of sourcing), does list a calorie breakdown by percentages for each food. Which is super helpful, they did the math for us. This is what it looks like:

I guess I’ve been feeding a keto or near-keto diet and didn’t even know it. :grin:


(Ken) #76

Yes, that looks pretty good. I’d like to see the breakdown for regular ol’ Purina Dog Chow, or Ol’ Roy from Walmart. I suspect they’re considerably different.


#77

Yeah, look them up, I just did and the contrast is pretty shocking. I can’t even get a screen shot of them because the ingredient list is too long for my laptop screen. I totally get that it’s not possible for most people to pay an arm and a leg for dog food, but there are good options in lower price ranges. I do love this site.


(icky) #78

I’m also wondering about this… I’ve often heard this, and while it may have been the case at some point 1950s? 1980s? I’m kinda wondering whether it’s not just become a ridiculous urban myth…

I live in Europe and a few years ago, I saw a documentary about how pet food is made, and they actually showed a camera team filming in a pet food factory and there was quite a hilarious bit, where the company’s quality controllers 3 or 4 people in coveralls were doing the quality controls…

Which consisted of them all getting a spoon and trying the “dog food” to see if it tasted right…

It was quite a “haha” part of the documentary with all the viewers obviously going “OMG! They’re eating the dog food!” and the quality controllers explaining “Well, our production standards are acutally “food grade” so technically our dog food is fit for human consumption and this is the easiest/ surest way for us to quality control it…”

Since I saw that (well-made, reliable) documentary, I’m kinda wondering about this urban myth that all the most horrific dregs go into dog and cat food… ???


(icky) #79

I don’t know if this is true, but I’ve been told by a vet that for dogs it’s really healthy to fast once a week, but that for cats it is NOT healthy… Dunno if @Callisto can confirm or deny this??


(Ken) #80

An additional comment. The macro for that food is essentially the Paleo “Whole Animal” macro. Those folks have really got it right, it’s the same way I feed my dogs, by sourcing the individual ingredients.

You really can say you’re feeding “Doggy Paleo”.


#81

You’re right to wonder, and I don’t think we’ll know for sure without someone doing a great deal of undercover effort. The standards for rendered meat (including the aforementioned by-products) do have a significantly lower standard for quality that anything sold for human consumption. By-products can be a controversial topic because the organ meats that we all love so much do fall into this category. Found another great post from Dog Food Advisor (which I do trust, I think they are truthful and also fair to the manufacturers) to explain:

The reason I don’t trust the by-products is because if they were good organ meat, the manufacturer can just list them individually in the ingredients as they do on the Raw Bistro label. It’s when they get grouped into “by-products” that I raise my eyebrows.

I’ve heard reports long ago of factory workers throwing pallets of meat with the plastic wrap still on them into vats for rendering. It does sound like an urban myth, but there are a couple of reasons I’m still wary of corners being cut during production.

First is the massive recall of pet foods back in 2005 where a huge number of brands had to recall pretty much every one of their foods because of melamine poisoning, which killed numerous cats and dogs. It was because they were all sourcing their protein meal from a place in China, which in turn was adding melamine (a plastic of some sort I believe) intentionally because it would show a higher protein level upon analysis.

Second is that I had incidents occur with two brands (which I will not name) of raw dog food that I’ve used in the past. Both were good brands but got big/popular, and unfortunately as production gets bigger and sometimes outsourced, quality standards slip in important ways. With Brand A, I found a hard piece of plastic once. With Brand B, I found a flimsy piece of blue plastic wrap. If these hadn’t been raw foods, I would never have known they were even there as they would have gotten cooked down with everything else. So yeah, my trust level is super low when it comes to the manufacturing process.

Regarding fasting for cats, the concern is that cats can get hepatic lipidosis (acute life-threatening fatty liver) when they are fasted, and this doesn’t happen in dogs. In cats, I do think there are mitigating factors, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a higher quality species-appropriate diet would make it less likely or even impossible. I’m sure wild cats go hungry all the time, it’s a fact of life for carnivores. It’s also associated with overweight cats suddenly going without food, usually for a couple of days at least. That said, I probably wouldn’t mess around with it. I’ve seen it too many times (and seen too many fatalities) to risk it, especially until there’s more evidence that it’s diet-related, even though I suspect it is.

Hope that helps! Good questions!