Beneful dog food.

[Fidget]

My sister gave me half a container of Beneful dog food. It's fairly low in fat (2%) protein is 11%. It looks like something I'd eat if I was told it was stew! The peas look like peas, the carrots like carrots :shock: So I gave it to the kids and they liked it.
My kids dinner is always 75-90%% fresh fruit & veggies with a bit of something like meat/potatoes/rice/pasta/etc.
I'm thinking on days I have nothing healthful to add to the fruit & veggies maybe a 1/4 container of this between the 5 would be a nice balance with the fruit/veggies. I can always freeze the rest in little containers for another day when I'm eating nothing healthful to share at dinner.

Has anyone checked this stuff out and what do you think for rattie food? It's also easy to eat, I'm thinking maybe when I had a kid that didn't want to eat it might be tempting?

 

[jorats]

My beef with it (sorry for the pun :lol: ) is the fact that it's a dog food and not a rat food. But looking at the ingredients the only thing I don't like about it is the meat by product. It's certainly not formulated for rats therefore lacks all proper nutrients but for a sick rat that won't eat, this might be a tempting option.

 

[Moon]

I remember reading the ingredients on a package of Beneful.. and was not impressed. Generally, all the dog and cat food you can buy in WalMart or a Grocery store is crud (there are a very tiny number of exceptions). I personally see no reason to add artificial colouring or flavours to dog food.

And with meat by products, no only do you not know what parts you are feeding, you don't know what animal you are feeding. Just because they call it beef stew, doesn't mean there's not turkey, lamb or zebra in there.

 

[Cityratt]

Also, what about Sodium? I know alot of grocery store foods are quite high in sodium (mainly the wet foods, however i would imagine there would be crossover to the dry foods as well). This wouldn't be wonderful for their kidneys.

Ive never personally looked into it because my dog eats Hills z/d (uber allergies)....

 

[Moon]

Yeah... not so jazzed about the salt in there either.

 

[Good Karma]

And with meat by products, no only do you not know what parts you are feeding, you don't know what animal you are feeding. Just because they call it beef stew, doesn't mean there's not turkey, lamb or zebra in there.

...or road kill or euthanized dogs or cats...or rats...

When it says "meat" instead of the actually animal is can be literally anything and many ultra-low quality foods will add anything that goes to the rendering plant and that includes euthanized animals from shelters and road kill. Horrible thought but its true.

I wouldn't feed that food to any animal.

 

[user 78]

Unfortunately most of the pet foods available in chain stores and such are awful. "By products" is generally the leftovers/meats deemed unfit for human consumption and could be anything from cancerous livers/hearts to feet, feathers, horns.. And that's if they name the source. "Meat" as GoodKarma and Moon pointed out, could be pretty much anything that's been tossed out.

 

[Cityratt]

Unfortunately most of the pet foods available in chain stores and such are awful. "By products" is generally the leftovers/meats deemed unfit for human consumption and could be anything from cancerous livers/hearts to feet, feathers, horns.. And that's if they name the source. "Meat" as GoodKarma and Moon pointed out, could be pretty much anything that's been tossed out.

I know that the term byproduct is usually seen with a negative connotation, and im not debating about the low-quality products used in grocery store foods. However, companies like Hills and Medi-cal use chicken byproducts in their foods, this is a common concern for purchasers however in that case byproducts refer to the organ meats which humans dont consume on a large salce basis (liver, lungs, kidneys etc). These meats usually contain more nutrients than the muslce meats that humans do use and can be benifical to the animals.

I know it doesnt directly pertain to the discussion at hand, its just something that crops up all the time at work, so instinctively bring that up...

 

[user 78]

Hill's, as far as I've know, has used and continues to use the same grade and pieces of meats/by products as any other pet food.

I'd like to know where you got that information from, though, CityRatt. Every article I've ever read on pet food cites Hill's/Science Diet as being an over priced bag of ground up crap.

 

[Cityratt]

I work at a Vet clinic so its through the hills and medical representitives as well as the nutrition training i've received there. And im going to try and not sound rude, but my dog has allergies and if not for hills would be dead (she needs hydrolized protein which medical has only just recently started making). Its a touchy subject for me, so i dont really want to fight about if its crap or not (everyone is intitled to their opinions, and knowing that im touchy on the subject i know i wouldnt be able to locially and unemotionally state my case).

Maybe i shouldn't have posted that, if you want to delete my post in regards to that please do so.

 

[user 78]

It was an honest question. Everything I have read has said it wasn't any good, so if you had something saying differently I just wanted to read it.

 

[Cityratt]

Im sorry Java, like i tried to say before im just really over-sensitive about it. Next time i go into work i can try and dig-up some literature if you like (and if i can remember)

I guess because we came so close to losing Tess (her intestine twisted), and because she is my world i get my back up for no reason...

 

[Fidget]

What is Byproduct???

Frankly I'm more concerned about the growth hormones and the antibiotics that are given to food animals automatically as a rule than I am about what part of the animal things are coming from.
I worked in a butcher shop. I expect all the bits that didn't come in with the carcass's are byproducts? Cause every part we got that didn't have a displayable name went into the hamburger machine for you to eat.
I wouldn't personally eat any organ meat just cause I didn't grow up doing it so it's 'ucky'. But others do. (and I eat it in hamburger) I'd expect the drugs they put into the animals to settle in the organs but we still sold organs at a good meat price.

I recently asked about making our dead kids available as snake food to stand in for a live kid. It was brought up that there is the question of what meds the kid was on at the time of death. I did research (still am), snake people would't want a kid that had antibiotics in it's body unless it was shown they were ineffective or unharmful at the time of the kid's death. (that's why the question is not so simple, depends on many factors differing for each med)
Yet animals raised for meat are routinely and automatically treated with antibiotics with no sign of illness. And there are charts that make it ok or not ok. But - since when do they know everything? Lile the cumulative affect? Like how a 6 month study is going to correlate to children eating meat for 16 years that's been laced with growth hormones?
The Asperger's Syndrome people might want to look into that.

Not good for my snake, but ok for me and me my family?

 

[Fidget]

I can't remember everything I've seen, but I have seen tpig farmers go to a recent bunch of newborn pggies and trim the tail on every one and and give them a shot of antibiotic.
Cows are routinely given antibotics not individually as a cure but en masse as a prcautinary.
I can't imagine how the parts that are eschewed as hamburger for humans even can be more tainted rather than just less desirable.

 

[user 78]

90% of the cat foods I use promote using hormone free, free ranged animals. Wherever possible, I try and buy things that use organic sources.

I don't believe there's any animal product available without antibiotics, but I know that some of the more premium foods use meats that have no growth hormones or steroids, etc.. Brands like Wellness or Karma are a couple. They're not available in grocery stores and wal-mart's, and can be sort of difficult to find if you don't have many premium pet shops around.

 

[Good Karma]

I fully agree with Javakitty. Cityratt, i know there are huge debates over things like this. Unfortunately vets do not get a lot of training about nutrition and what they do get is often directly from dog food companies, of course dog food companies are going to say their product is great.

So instead of putting by-prodcuts on the lable, why don't they list the organ meat they are putting in the food if that is what they are doing? And no, large quantities of kidney, lung and liver and not good for dogs/cats, organs should not account for more that 15-12% of their diet. A diet high in offal is unbalanced.

Has any one ever read the book Food Pets Die For? It's quite an awakening...

 

[Cityratt]

Thats cool guys, everyone has their own opinions (supported by various levels of education and training) and some things are more agreed upon than others (the amt of sodium in the diet for instance).

One of the Dr's I work with is very nutritionally oriented, which I enjoy because as you said Karma not a lot of Dr's are nutritionally inclined. (we even have weekly nutrition oriented training sessions)

Yes my Nutritonal training comes from the veterinary feild, which is dominanted by companies like Hills and Medi Cal, so that is where the majority of the information comes from. I can aprechiate the bias placed there, but I try to form my own opinions with a variety of information (obviously infromation from Hills is biased, but there is also research to back up their findings).

Karma who wrote that book you mentioned? when i get time i would like to look at it.

On more of a side note; isnt it fantastic that we can have conversations like this? When i first got my dog the knowedge out there about what's in our pets food was more unaccessable. I think its great that more and more people are becomeing educated upon what their pets eat - and not just going to walmart and picking up a bag of ol' roy. It's obvious that i am out numbered here when it comes to veterinary diets verus more natural, holistic foods - but atleast there are enough of us giving thought to the entire situation.

Again, I apologise for getting so stupidly out of joint before. just a tidge stressed out and aparently that makes me irrational. Sorry :S

ETA* just wanted to clarifiy that i wasnt implying that other companies DONT have research - im assuming that they do of some sorts, i'm just not familiar with it

 

[user 78]

Has any one ever read the book Food Pets Die For? It's quite an awakening...

It's on my Amazon Wishlist! I've been having to prowl through Google for food info, and I'll get the odd excerpt from it. It looks like a very good read, though.

CityRatt, it's written by Ann Martin, you can get info/excerpts on Amazon. You didn't seem overtly out of shape previously. It's totally understandable that, since this has worked so well for you, you would believe in it. Just as some of us have had good results with other means. I congratulate you on trying to form your own opinions on the foods you get, though. Many people I know in the vet 'industry' just blindly follow whatever they're told by the products companies. It's upsetting, to say the least, when you hit walls like that.

 

[Moon]

I didn't put roadkill and euthanized pets on my list because I thought they fell under the heading of "Animal Digest" ... not by-products.

The problem with a food company saying they use the "good" by-products, is that there is no way to qualify that. If they are using a particular organ, they should list that. I was taught that poultry by-products most often meant feet, feathers, etc.

 

[Good Karma]

I work at a vet clinic as well and have been to numerous work shops and conferences on nutrition.

The difference at my clinic is that i work for a holistic vet who uses nutrition (carefully thought through, home made diets) to treat illnesses.

For instance, by switching a diabetic cat to a raw diet we got her off daily insulin shots. By getting a golden onto raw we got rid of her chronic yeast and other fungal infections... i could go on and on about how many animals were saved, or lives improved by switching them off commercial food into raw or home cooked foods.