What to Look for When Choosing a Dog Food

There are a few red flags to watch for when choosing quality dog food for your new pup. We know you want to feed the best for your new companion to help keep them healthy and happy throughout all stages of their life. Read through our list of things to look for when choosing a dog food:

By-products, artificial flavors, and colors

By-products are not a complete source of protein. Artificial flavors or colors are unnatural ingredients and have no nutritional value.

Ingredient splitting

This is a way to move meat further up an ingredient list. For example, by splitting things like wheat, wheat shorts, whole wheat, etc., meat ingredients are pushed further up the ingredient label. This means there is more wheat in the formula.

Although the ingredients at the top of the listing are the most important, you should still read the entire label. Look for ingredients that will help your dog stay healthy, like Sweet Potatoes and Green Lipped Mussels.

A food that names “Lamb” alone as the first ingredient actually has Lamb much further down the ingredient label. By the time the food is fully produced. This is due to the water being evaporated from the food during the cooking process. This decreases the total weight of the ingredient drastically. Lamb Meal is dehydrated and concentrated before being added to the recipe.

Recalls

Although the ingredients in your Dog Food are without a doubt of #1 importance, it is also important to trust the manufacturer. TLC has never issued a recall on any product. You are safe with us! All of TLC’s ingredients (except the Lamb and Green Lipped Mussels from New Zealand) are North America.

Expiry dates

The expiry date is an important thing to look for when choosing dog food. Many pet foods that are bought in retail stores are often several months old. Pet food must have an expiry date on all packaging, so make sure you check for this before purchasing. TLC Pet Food avoids spending time on retail shelves and ships directly to you!

Claims of “Organic” pet food

Many pet foods will use the term “organic” on the packaging. It is important to know that when a label says “made with organic ingredients,” this only means that a minimum of 70% of the ingredients are organic, with the other 30% being nonorganic ingredients. For a pet food to be legally allowed to bear the “USDA Organic” label, it means the product must be 95%-100% organic, not including salt and water content.

Foods that contain the word “with.”

When a pet food label contains the word “with” (for example, “Dog Food with Chicken”), the “with” only legally has to mean 3% total weight or more of that ingredient is in the food. Be wary of the “with” rule when searching for Dog Food!