Are you paying lots of dollars for this brand of food? There are some good reasons why you shouldn’t.
When Natural Pet Foods opened up years ago in the Ottawa neighbourhood of Westboro, Royal Canin was one of the best brands we could stock. Since then though, there have been huge improvements in the quality of pet foods and an explosion in the number of brands available to customers. Royal Canin has not improved much though. It's expensive and not worth what pet owners are paying for it when much better pet foods are available. Here's why. The ingredient list for Royal Canin Labrador Retriever dog food is as follows pulled off their website this day.
Chicken by-product meal, corn gluten meal, brown rice, oat groats, brewers rice, barley, natural flavors, chicken fat, dried plain beet pulp, pea fiber, wheat gluten, pork meal, fish oil, vegetable oil, sodium silico aluminate, calcium carbonate, potassium chloride, psyllium seed husk, salt, sodium tripolyphosphate, taurine, fructooligosaccharides, vitamins [DL-alpha tocopherol acetate (source of vitamin E), inositol, niacin supplement, L-ascorbyl-2-polyphosphate (source of vitamin C), D-calcium pantothenate, biotin, pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6), riboflavin supplement, thiamine mononitrate (vitamin B1), vitamin A acetate, folic acid, vitamin B12 supplement, vitamin D3 supplement], L-lysine, choline chloride, glucosamine hydrochloride, trace minerals [zinc proteinate, zinc oxide, ferrous sulfate, manganese proteinate, manganous oxide, copper sulfate, calcium iodate, sodium selenite, copper proteinate], L-carnitine, marigold extract (Tagetes erecta L.), tea, chondroitin sulfate, rosemary extract, preserved with mixed tocopherols and citric acid.
When we look at the ingredient list this Royal Canin dog food the first ingredient is chicken byproduct on an ingredient list we looked up on April 26th 2018. This means they are likely using cheap non-human grade parts of the chicken. The stuff that wouldn't go into grocery store packages of chicken for humans and isn't on the ingredient list of any pet foods we sell.
This is how wikipedia defines chicken byproducts.
"Poultry by-product meal (PBM) is a high-protein commodity used as a major component in some pet foods. It is made from grinding clean, rendered parts of poultry carcasses and can contain bones, offal and undeveloped eggs, but only contains feathers that are unavoidable in the processing of the poultry parts."
And from the PetMd website
"By-products (for example, chicken by-products or beef by-products): clean non-rendered "parts", other than meat, derived from slaughtered mammals. It includes, but is not limited to lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, blood, bone, fatty tissue and stomachs and intestines freed of their contents."
https://www.petmd.com/dog/nutrition/evr_pet_food_for_your_pets_sake
Things that are rendered are considered unfit for consumption by humans and can taste bad to pets. This can sometimes require pet foods to be sprayed with fats or salted excessively. In the case of Royal Canin the salt shouldn't even be on the ingredient list. It is very hard for an animal being fed a good diet tro be salt deficient.
Another questionable ingredient on the Royal Canin Labrador Retriever ingredient list is corn gluten meal. Despite it's name corn gluten meal is not a gluten. It's often a byproduct of processing corn is an inexpensive filler that bumps up protein levels in a pet food. For most pets the most digestible protein comes from high quality animal meat, fish or eggs. Even grocery store foods are sometimes superior to Royal Canin. Ask yourself why you are shelling out $75 or more for something that shouldn't cost more than grocery store food. Or better yet ask yourself what's in Natural Pet Foods brands of pet foods.
In our store we carefuly choose the brands we carry. We want a wide selection of pet foods that will allow all customers to find what they are looking for. There are no byproducts, cheap fillers, artificial flavors/preservatives, or Chinese produced rice etc. This is why Natural Pet Foods is your trusted source. From the begining we wanted to have the healthiest possible choices for your pet.
What our foods do have is lots of high quality meat. Often times there are healthy natural fruits and vegetables. These superfoods have antioxidants that could slow down aging and have anti cancer effects. This is why Natural Pet Foods is your trusted source. From the begining we wanted to have the healthiest possible choices for your pet.
These natural sources of antioxidants are almost totally absent in Royal Canin dog food. No surprise there because they are trying to make their food cheaply and things like berries and spinach are expensive. The ingredient list of Royal Canin Dog Food makes a tiny mention of marigold extract and tea at the end of the ingredient list but this is really ridiculous because the ingredients at the end are the LEAST heavy by weight in the pet food kibble when we looked at it.
If you buy Royal Canin for your pet you should be asking yourself
"How healthy would I be if all I ate was chicken byproduct, corn gluten meal, and synthetic vitamins?"
We often tell our customers that dogs are survivors and that they will survive on anything. For a while at least. And some do live long lives on whatever they are given. On the other hand, research is hinting that certain plants like fruits and vegetables have cancer protective properties and that their antioxidants could prolong life and maybe even protect against cancer. Secondly most of our store's customers treat their pet as a member of their family, and as such want their pet to eat a diet that , like theirs, that contain at least a portion of the fruits and vegetables that they have in their own diet. Dogs and cats being carnivores eat a smaller fraction of these plants, but all the same when they consume some when they eat their natural prey.
. Many people are also attracted to the breed specific bags like the Labrador Retriever bag we looked at. Our opinion is that the small differences in these foods should not be very significant.
In our online store we carry some of the top rated pet foods like Orijen, Acana, Fromm, Natural Balance, Boreal and Pulsar. These companies often own their factories and are very conscientious about the quality of the ingredients that go into making their kibble. There have been very few recalls of these brands in contrasts to cheap foods made at facilities where cross contamination from other brands produced there is possible.
Our store is online and you can simply search for the right result. We highly suggest the Orijen 6 Fish Lines for it's superior Omega 3s and joint support ingredients, as well as it's high inclusions of whole fish from sustainable sources.
Just for comparison check out just a few of the ingredients in the Fromm Chicken A La Veg for dogs formula
INGREDIENTS
Chicken, Chicken Meal, Pearled Barley, Oatmeal, Sweet Potatoes,Brown Rice, White Rice, Dried Whole Egg, Menhaden Fish Meal, Millet,Chicken Fat, Dried Tomato Pomace,Safflower Oil, Herring Meal, Cheese,Flaxseed, Carrots, Broccoli,Cauliflower, Apples, Green Beans,Chicken Cartilage, Potassium Chloride, Cranberries, Blueberries,
Looks just like what you would eat dosn't it? And it should because your pet is a member of your family and should eat just as well as you.
Check out some of our great natural pet foods in our online store at www.naturalpetfoods.ca
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