 Barked: Wed Sep 22, '10 9:26am PST |
 | |  | | In response to Zoie's post: Nutro Ultra isn't bad, not enough that I'd want dissuade someone from feeding it, but it's hardly great, either.
It is absolutely loaded with oils, far, far, far too many in my opinion. None of them are bad by themselves, but there is soybean oil (I don't really like to see this in any food, period), fish oil, sunflower oil, and that's after the inclusion of Chicken Fat (not bad by itself, but again, why so oily?) That's going to make any dog's coat shine, regardless of how healthy it is.
Chicken meal is the first ingredient (great!), but what follows are three rice ingredients. I'd rather see a few meat products moved up in front of the rice, especially as there are three of them. Even for a grain-inclusive food that seems kind of heavy to me.
Beet Pulp is another big no-no, as it can cause teeth problems. It's a sugary sweet substance, I expect to encourage a dog to eat regardless of taste, because I rarely see it in higher-quality foods. This food has enough fat and oils in it anyway to make it tasty without the inclusion of a product suspected to cause teeth problems.
Last on my list is the inclusion of synthetic Vitamin K, but my opinion on that is that I'll never feed a food with it, because it is not worth the risk, but neither is there anything to really indicate that long-term feeding of barely trace amounts of K3 cause any harm. I think it is likely more that the poor-quality foods that are inclusive of it (versus few if any high-quality foods) that are killing lifespan, not K3 on its own. It's more one of those things I use to convince people to switch, rather than something that sets of alarm bells in my head.
------
All that said, I really must applaud Nutro for moving forward and greatly improving their ingredient lists recently, in response to the polls here on Dogster a few months ago. |  |  | |  |
|
| my posts | my page | msg me | my family's posts | gift me | become pals | [notify] |
5
