Best Puppy Food?

Mine eat Wellness...

I am copying this list of foods from a boxers forum I came across while I was researching on food

"I've spent hours upon hours reading about dog foods, nutrition, comparing ingredients, learning what to look for, what to avoid, etc. and my own personal "top picks" of dog food would be (in no particular order and no particular formula):

Nature's Variety
Innova (a Natura brand product)
Innova EVO
Wellness
Merrick
Newman's Own Organics
Solid Gold
Timberwolf Organics
Trippett (is a canned food and not a complete diet but I feed it for breakfast a few days a week)
Wysong
Spot's Stew (a canned food)
California Natural (a Natura brand product)
The Honest Kitchen (a dehydrated food)
Pinnacle
Petguard
Karma
Canidae
Healthwise (a Natura brand product)
Doc's Real Food For Dogs
Lick Your Chops
NRG (another dehydrated food)"

Well, it's easy to go for the "natural" diets (we call them fad diets at the hospital) because they sound so great and the pet stores push them like crazy. They aren't "bad" on paper, but no one knows what the long term effects are, and there's no research on their cooking methods or ingredients. It's a little disheartening also when pull the "animal testing" card because the companies who reluctantly have to do it, spend millions to make sure that diets are formulatd correctly and won't be causing any short or long term problems in dogs of all ages and species.

If you think about it, those companies who claim they aren't doing animal testing, are really just using your animals as the tests. They aren't FDA approved so there's no guarantee and it's a risk you're taking.

This all being said, I fed Ritz Science Diet Growth as a puppy, and Natural Balance and now Wellness as an adult. I feel comfortable in trying these diets now that I'm positive he has grown up to be a healthy dog, and I can sense any changes in his metabolism and health on the new foods, and so far the only change is a little weight gain =) I also am trying to change foods regularly, in terms of brands, and bags because of the question of variability. If one bag happens to be deficient in say, Vitamin A, then he won't be eating the deficient food for a very long time. Likewise, his protein and fiber sources come from more than one diet so overall he is getting a more balanced diet.

I am really thinking about switching them both back to Euk or Science Diet though.

I'm sorry I didn't clarify more about the FDA. The FDA doesn't directly approve animal foods, but they have a Center for Veterinary Medicine that has staff Veterinary Nutritionists who watchdog AAFCO. AAFCO doesn't necessarily abide by the FDA's or veterinary nutrition standards.

There are some realizations you have to make about AAFCO. While there is sound medical research dictating their policies, AAFCO was created and is run by the pet food industry, not the government or medical community at large. Fortunately, there are many veteinary nutritionists working with it, and as a result, the larger pet food industries (Science Diet, Iams, Eukaneuba) has done the research that created these guidelines for others to follow as kind of a baseline protocol.

AAFCO’s main responsibilities are to regulate label text and product names. Because it is a private organization, pet food companies do not have to comply with these standards if they don’t want to and AAFCO has no enforcement authority. Interestingly, each state can set pet food manufacturing guidelines that must be adhered to for that state. Alaska and Florida have no guidelines for pet foods produced in their states.

AAFCO was formed in 1974 because the industry found NRC’s regulations to be too restrictive and created its own procedures for claiming nutritional adequacy in pet foods. They also decided that instead of lengthy feeding trials, chemical nutritional analysis would be conducted to determine minimum nutritional requirements.

Click to expand...

This being said about AAFCO, Hills Science Diet, and Iams Inc hire Veterinary Nutritionists on staff to help design, perfect, and produce high quality foods that are healthy for companion animals. None of the other companies do. As wonderful as some of the other foods sound, none of their ingredients or label claims are unsubstantiated by veterinarians.

I too feed Wellness, because I think it's a good brand and like the idea of no byproducts, but everyday I read more articles about holistic diets (who knows, maybe propoganda?) and I am more inclined to go back with what is scientific. What do you guys think? There's so many perspectives on this topic and I want to figure out my ethics on the pet food industry before I'm bombarded with propogranda in vet school.

I'm not totally sold on the holistic "thing" nor am I sold on current scientific fact (since that seems to change quite often). I originally picked Wellness because corn wasn't the first ingredient - now there's an illogical way to chose - then a lady that owns one of the top show dobermans in the country and I got to be friends and she's sold on Wellness and her boy is thriving on it after eating it for years. Then I started studying dog foods (ok, a little late). Then I contacted the state people (geesh old age is a pain, I can't remember the agency name now) anyway they had done a year long equine study and our horses were picked to be included and I still have a ton of paperwork from them. Long story a bit shorter they put me in touch with a veterinary nutritionist that works for the state and he liked the Wellness and was feeding it to his dogs. Personally I like the Royal Canin and the Nutro-Max just as well.