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Whats the best dog food?

This is a question that is continually searched for online,
and we get asked it all the time, so where do we start?

There are so many opinions on what the best dog food is, that it is really difficult to find clear cut answers – from those that say it must be raw, to those that say grains are good – and every other opinion in between, it becomes a nightmare to find the right answers.

To make matters even worse, a lot of the information you will find is simply based on opinion and beliefs, alongside a great big dollop of smoke and mirrors from the multi-billion dollar dog food corporations who own most of the well-known dog food brands.

Mars, Nestle and Colgate are not names immediately associated with UK dog foods, but these goliaths own most of the well-known dog food brands in the UK and USA, but that certainly doesn’t make their food the best – they’re just the best at marketing their products. And as they are so dominant in the supermarkets and multiple chain stores, you may well believe that they are the ONLY foods available – but this is far from the case.

Did you know?

Mars own: Pedigree, Cesar, Chappi, Frolic, Kitekat, Pal, Nutro, Greenies, James Wellbeloved, Royal Canin, Sheba, Whiskas.

Nestle own: Tails.com, Bakers, Beneful, Beta, Bonio, Felix, Friskies, Just Right, ProPlan, Purina One, Purina Veterinary Diets, Winalot.

Colgate-Palmolive own: Hills Science Plan, Hills Prescription Diets.

Why should you listen to us?

We have gathered knowledge through years of research and pet ownership, as to what the dietary needs of a domestic dog are – but this is absolutely not enough on its own. You also need to fully understand what is actually in the food as well. And we have spent years analysing dog food labelling and ingredients, and we know ALL the tricks that the manufacturers use – and boy do they use them!!

Combining these two sets of knowledge together, in our opinion, gives us the right attributes to give you our recommendations. You will always get clear accurate and informative advice from us, based on the specific dietary needs of your dog. We have helped hundreds of pet owners find the right food for their furry family.

We are not led by the big brands, as we are only prepared to sell dog food diets that are clearly labelled with simple healthy ingredients priced across all budgets. We totally believe that pets are essential members of the family, and we are driven to help all our customers make informed choices so that they can feed the best possible diets to their pets, ensuring they always get the best nutrition and care.

What is our opinion?

The main factor for us, is that a dog is a carnivore first and foremost – yes, it can be debated that the domestic dog has adapted to eat some grains, but you cannot takeaway that their whole DNA and digestive systems were designed to eat meat as their ancestors the wolf did.

If you take a moment to think about the wolf, they would not have been roaming the land looking for paddy fields full of rice or searching for the nearest field of wheat or barley. But finding a dead rabbit carcass would go down an absolute treat… the fur, bones, organs, and meat – no problem. This would easily and quickly be digested, including the fur that would act as a natural de-wormer.

This type of scavenging gave the wolf a balanced diet, with few ingredients, and a meat protein and carbohydrate source perfectly matching their digestive needs. And a domestic dog is basically no different, they are highly adapted to eat meat, and like all carnivores find it difficult to digest large quantities of unnatural grains.

The key here is the word LARGE… for years, and still today, many dog food diets contain large amounts of unnatural difficult to digest ingredients like cereals, and for years these cheap ingredients/fillers were (and still are) commonly used in the majority of dog foods, and very often you will find them in some of the most well-known brand leading foods.

Why is diet so important?

Your dog’s diet performs a huge role in supporting their immune system, as about 80% of your dog’s immunity comes from the gut, and this is so important. This immunity is what helps your dog fight the toxins they are exposed to on a daily basis, and a poor diet or compromised digestive system, will have huge negative implications to their healthy gut microbes. Poor diets with unnatural ingredients will reduce the number of enzymes in the gut, which affects the immune system – and the immune system is ultimately what keeps the dog healthy.

Creating and maintaining a strong immune system is an important part of good health, as the digestive system does much more than just digest food. The gut is an interactive system that connects to all parts of the body, and if this system is not working correctly through poor diet, it can lead to long term autoimmune disorders such as intolerances, allergies, arthritis, irritable bowels, organ diseases and cancers.

A dogs digestive system is designed to digest food quickly, and the intestinal tract will destroy toxins, bacteria, and parasites when working efficiently. This process requires the immune system to work hard when digesting food, so if your dog is constantly trying to digest large amounts of unnatural highly processed high starch non diverse ingredients such as grains and cereals, it doesn’t have the strength to perform efficiently and toxins start to build up and weaken the immune system.

What are the common mistakes?

Choosing the right healthy dog food for your pooch is incredibly difficult, and the millions of pounds spent on marketing by the likes of the Mars, Nestle & Colgate companies, drowns you in a sea of wonderfully packaged glossy products – so we have listed some of the common mistakes that are normally made.

1. Doing an online search…

An online search for “what is the best dog food” really doesn’t give you any answers you can trust, with most first page results being paid for by the manufacturers to appear at the top of your search page. All the top results will show “Ad” by the result, and these should be ignored as the supplier of these foods has paid for their product to come up top of your search – it is called “pay per click” and leading brands will pay handsomely to appear on this first page. The more they pay, the more times they appear in the top listing of page one, making them appear to be the best as their names always come up in front of you.

Next up will be some review sites, and these must be looked at very carefully as to who is actually behind them, as there can be many fake recommendations or misleading star ratings. Fake reviews are incredibly common, and star ratings with no information are also very misleading and should be treated with some scepticism. It is also best to ignore anything that shows reviews or damming reports from the USA, as we have much stricter regulations in the production of animal foods than they do, and very often the issues reported do not affect the UK marketplace.

2. Use a social media post…

Ask the question “Can anybody recommend a really good dog food” on social media, and you will get dozens of responses all recommending a range of completely different foods and brands. Very often there is no background to the recommendation, and what helped one dog owner, can be detrimental to the next. Shortly after asking the question, your social media feed fills full of dog food brands adverts, again being paid for by the manufacturer to get their name in front of you.

3. It must be good; I see it advertised on TV…

Only the huge corporations can afford the costs of these massive advertising campaigns. Companies like Mars Petcare and Nestle Purina are multi-billion dollar turnover businesses, and they own numerous dog food brands, for instance Mars owns Pedigree and Royal Canin, but it doesn’t mean they offer the best dog food.

4. They sell it in veterinary practices: it must be good…

Very often you will see brands such as Royal Canin, Purina and Hills sold at the vets, but just because these brands have positioned themselves directly in a veterinary practices with incentives, it doesn’t mean they are the best. Royal Canin is notorious for having complicated ingredient lists, and they very rarely list the percentages in the diet. Here is a typical Royal Canin ingredients list..

Rice, maize, dehydrated poultry protein, maize gluten, animal fats, hydrolysed animal proteins, beet pulp, vegetable protein isolate, fish oil, minerals, psyllium husks and seeds, soya oil etc

No percentages, no named animal source, and the top two ingredients being rice and maize. You have no idea what the meat protein source is because poultry means either (or all) Duck, Chicken or Turkey and you will never know. Animal fats or hydrolysed animal proteins can be from any animal species, and again you don’t know what you’re feeding. Do the vets actually know what they are selling ingredients wise??

5. The breeder gave it me to get started…

Very similar to the “vets selling pet food” scenario – the big brands offer substantial discounts and incentives for registered breeders to use their products, which in turn means that when you get your new puppy, the breeder supplies you with the discounted (or sometimes free) manufacturers food. Unfortunately, this whole process is driven by marketing money, again from the large corporations – a very clever tactic to get you on their brands – but it still doesn’t mean it’s the best!

6. The supermarket sells its own brand, and it’s cheap…

You will see in the supermarkets and discount chain stores (the likes of Aldi and B&M), offering a cheap dry biscuit dog food, and they are really cheap – but how do they do it? Well, we’re back to understanding the labelling of the ingredients, a good example of a supermarket brand glossy bag will state on the front that its 100% complete and balanced with chicken & vegetables, what more could your pooch want?

But actually, based on the ingredients label it will only have 4% chicken, and 1.25% vegetables in the form of dried peas – shocking! The other 94.75% of the diet consists of unknown cereals (the highest ingredient in the diet) with meat and animal derivatives and oils & fats from an unknown animal species. Basically, a big bag of unknown stuff, containing unnatural cereals as the main ingredient, and a tiny amount of chicken and vegetables, AND THAT’S WHY ITS CHEAP!!

Confusing labelling not helping?

Manufacturers are really clever in tricking you into purchasing a poor unnatural diet by hiding exactly what is in the food – sounds a bit dramatic we know – but you will be shocked at how the description on the front of the bag, differs completely from the actual ingredients list!!

They use fantastic descriptions on the front of the bag, with phrases that really appeal to you [the human], but then using loopholes in the labelling regulations they hide the poor or unnatural ingredients in the recipe. Through no fault of your own, you’re effectively being tricked into feeding poor quality, unnatural ingredients to your canine, which over time can be really damaging to your dog’s immune system and subsequently its health..

The following is an example of a major brand of dog food owned by Mars Petcare that can at best be described as “misleading” as it is promoted and advertised as…

100% complete and balanced expert nutrition for your dog to enjoy and thrive on. Our tasty adult recipe with lamb is based on high quality animal protein, carefully selected to support your dog’s 7 signs of healthy vitality.

This all sounds fine, but the diet actually only contains 4.1% lamb – yes that’s right – even though the front of the glossy bag states it’s lamb, enforced by an image of a lamb, it only contains this tiny amount. The main meat source of the diet is actually Chicken and Turkey (30%), but there is no mention of this on the front of the bag. Having this meat source doesn’t make the diet bad, but why completely mislead the consumer by indicating that the diet is Lamb when it isn’t??

What does make the diet poor, is that it contains approximately 60% of cheap high starch, highly processed, non-diverse ingredients of Maize, Barley and Sorghum (similar to maize) for which long term feeding will very likely weaken the immune system leading to intolerances, allergies, and illness down the line.

How do you choose a healthy dog food?

Every dog is different, and they can have specific needs, but for a really good basic rule of thumb we always recommend you start off with the following…

• Feed a high meat content with a named species.
• NO or LOW grain contents.
• NO antioxidants, preservatives, or minerals.
• Balanced healthy simple ingredients (meat, fruit, veg)
• Main ingredients must show their percentages.

This sounds simple, but as we have said, the massive corporations make life very difficult by hiding the poor quality ingredients in their labelling, and this is where we can help you find the best healthy diet for your family pet. We are not brand led with the foods we stock, and we only sell the healthiest diets across all budgets, with clearly labelled foods that we have fully analysed and can whole heartedly endorse, which can then be tailored to your exact needs.

What is the best way to feed my dog?

It is really easy to get into bad habits when feeding our beloved dogs, just one look at those eyes and we give in to almost everything. But once you start feeding a healthy diet, we’ve put together some simple tricks that can go a long way in helping you feed your furry friend.

(Tip 1) Make sure that you are seen as the pack leader – dogs are highly sociable pack animals, and your dog will very often want to seek out the leader of the pack. If there doesn’t appear to be a steady leader in the pack (your family), the dog will attempt to become that leader. When your dog believes that they are the leader of the pack, that’s when your problems start.

To help enforce that you are the pack leader, it is best to always feed your dog after you have had your food. This simple trick makes the dog wait whilst you eat your food first, and they only get their meals after you have had yours. By making the dog realise that he gets his meal after yours, it enforces that pack leader mentality. They have to sit and wait patiently until you have finished your meal and then they can have theirs – simple.

(Tip 2) Is to put the food down for your dog (after your meal) and if it is not eaten after 5 minutes take it up and do not feed again until the next mealtime. Mealtimes should be an occasion, your dog should really be ready for his meal, but many dog owners simply put food out at the same time every day and leave it there for the dog to graze on throughout the day.

Dogs are not grazers, their ancestors would hunt for food, gorge on their catch, and then not eat until they were ready. We hear dog owners regularly complain that their dog is “fussy”, but most of these situations have been created by food being left to graze on, and then the owner continually changing foods to try and get them interested again.

Keep repeating this process until the dog eats the meal – and he will – when he’s hungry. This could possibly go on for a few days of them not eating, but with perseverance they will realise that when food is presented to them by the pack leader, it needs to be eaten.

(Tip 3) Only give treats that are completely natural and healthy, not highly processed ones that are full of poor ingredients. It is really important to think about what treats your dog gets throughout the day, as you can very easily fall into the trap of feeding a really healthy diet, but then ruin all your good efforts by giving poor unnatural ingredients through the treats.

As we have said previously, manufacturers will trick you with their marketing campaigns, to purchase poor quality ingredients. We offer a wide range of completely natural products, with most acting as a perfect dental chew at the same time. Your dog gets a completely healthy treat, whilst keeping their teeth stay clean and conditioned.

(Tip 4) Is to occasionally incorporate “intermittent fasting” into your dog’s feeding regime. The gut microbes in your dog are incredibly important and are the core to everything that goes on in your dog’s health. The balance of these microbes is extremely delicate, and the continual feeding of highly processed high starch unnatural ingredients damages them. Even the normal day to day life of a dog exposes them to toxins, so regular fasting can help the immune system detoxify any toxic build up and play a vital role in your in boosting you dogs immunity.

Wolves and wild dogs would “fast” naturally in their habitat, and they would go for days without food as part of their lifestyle. This means that they are naturally equipped to stay healthy for days without food and this process would boost the immune system to much healthier levels. Therefore, the argument is that it should do no harm to fast intermittently and fasting is generally safe and beneficial for dogs when done carefully.

Fasting your dog for a day every week or so can produce great health benefits, and you can always provide one or two small natural treats during the process if the guilt is really getting to you! But always make sure there is plenty of fresh water available. Only healthy adult dogs should be fasting (not puppies or senior dogs), and you should always seek veterinary advice before attempting this process, as it can be harmful in some specific cases.

What's on the menu?

At Homefeeds we currently stock 4 main ways of feeding.
This being Raw Food, Cold Pressed Food, Wet Food and Dry Kibble.

Each one of these ways of feeding has it’s good and bad points, but we strongly stand behind the high quality range that we stock, offering your dog the best diet that also works with your budget.

Raw Dog Food

Cold Pressed Dog Food

Wet Dog Food

Dry Dog Food