Dog-Food Ingredients

Compiled by Jerry D. Patillo, CPDT-KA
© Phoenix Behavior Consulting, 2014

Best Dog FoodThis page will probably ALWAYS be under construction. How many times have you searched for an ingredient? All you come up with is just a list of the ingredients in a particular food. The list doesn’t really tell you anything except this bag or can of dog food has this or that ingredient. Our goal is to provide you with really helpful information about various dog-food ingredients. The work below is a work in progress. If you don’t see an ingredient you’re concerned about, then please let us know. We will try to post a response to your inquiry as soon as possible.

The symbols beside the bullets below indicate my impression of the article’s evaluation of the ingredient.

  • + = overall positive or favorable evaluation
  • ± = overall mixed evaluation
  • – = overall negative or unfavorable evaluation
  • o = description by a dog-food manufacturer. We tend not to use manufacturers’ evaluations in the scoring of ingredients. The manufacturers tend to try to justify their use of inferior ingredients. Sometimes they still provide helpful information.

The fraction following the ingredient name indicates the number of positive evaluations vs. the number of total evaluations. E.g., 3/5 means there have been 5 evaluations linked, and 3 of them have been positive. ± counts as two evaluations, with one of them being favorable.

Let’s say, e.g., you see an ingredient marked thus: + + + ± ± -. That means it’s received 5 favorable evaluations and 3 unfavorable ones. So it received an evaluation score of 5/8, not too bad, but definitely not great.

choline chloride 3/4

corn gluten meal 1/6
the part of corn that remains after the nutritious parts (starch, germ, bran) have been removed; high in vegetable protein, not meat protein