Is pet food a scam?

[JosephDredd]

I don't understand how processed pellets could possibly be healthier for animals than fruits, veggies and meat (depending on whether they're herbivores, carnivores or omnivores).

I can maybe understand supplementing with pellets for certain types of animals who are maybe evolved for more exotic foods, but I don't see how feeding your dog synthesized and processed foods is could possibly be healthier than feeding them real food appropriate for the animal.

We all know that highly processed foods are horrible for humans and I'm pretty sure I've read about health problems that pets suffer due to their diets and I can easily imagine and entire industry based around the lie that you can only feed your animals certain products.

Is the pet food industry a scam?

 

[Pliny Pete]

My dogs only eat burritos

 

[xbone19]

i dont like animals enough to have a pet, good thing I dont have to worry about this first world problem

 

[JosephDredd]

i dont like animals enough to have a pet, good thing I dont have to worry about this first world problem

I'm pretty sure you've been sucked into a few manufactured needs. It's the basic goal of modern capitalism.

 

[Stargazer Rex]

A very knowledgeable man told me that real food is the best for dogs.

 

[JosephDredd]

My dogs only eat burritos

Is that just so you can blame your farts on them? (that's brilliant)

 

[Stargazer Rex]

My dogs only eat burritos

 

[zackryder]

its not better. its prob cheaper tho

 

[Jacob14]

I don't think anyone will argue that real food is better than pet food, but it's a fuck load easier just buying a 40 lbs bag of food for your dog. Doesn't make it a scam.

 

[ralphc1]

It's one of the biggest scams out there. People are conned into buying very expensive "health foods" for dogs and cats.

 

[Cayenne]

A lot of people feed a raw diet to their dogs and cats. It makes sense that it would be healthier since it's closer to what their ancestors would have eaten. It's a much bigger commitment, you're going to have to prepare everything yourself and make sure that your pet gets all the nutrition it needs. If you do it wrong you pet could get sick.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

Mine are on a raw diet with kibble as a backup for when chicken isn't on sale (which it usually is).

 

[SleepyBoy]

The portion recommendations on dog food labels are insane

Pedigree recommends Feeding

 

[Anung Un Rama]

its not better. its prob cheaper tho

And 1000x more convenient/practical.

And if you buy grain free/gluten free/ high quality protein brands then difference is insignificant.

 

[RedRocket44]

I don't own a dog / cat so I don't know enough about raw diets, but I can only assume they are better. My buddy owns a purebread german shepard and has it on a raw diet, and swears by it.

I used to work at a turkey slaughter / processing plant. It's a very large corporation and I worked at a "primary processing" plant (slaughter), where we would basically kill and de-bone turkeys (breast, wings, drums, thighs) all day into totes which would go to "further processing" plants within our companies network that turned the turkey into lunch meats, deli meats, ground turkey, turkey burgers, tray-packed (retail) turkey parts etc. Only like 5-10% of our business was your traditional whole-bagged christmas turkey.

Any meat (basically scraps... light or dark meat) that we didn't have a customer or "home" for, we piled into totes and sold to a pet-food company that made it into commercial feed pellets (feed for farms) as well as for pet-food pellets that'd you'd get at your local pet store. This was basically bones and scraps off the floor as well as scraps caught in the conveyors at the end of the day that we couldn't do anything else with. Basically the most useless parts of the turkey that we couldn't even ship off to be put into a hotdog or grounds, so I can only imagine the nutritional quality of the end petfood (or farm use) products -- and this was fully allowed by regulators.

 

[RedRocket44]

The portion recommendations on dog food labels are insane

Pedigree recommends Feeding

 

[SleepyBoy]

nutritional value of those pellets though probably don't come close to a raw diet.

I'm just making numbers up here, but based on what I know goes into some of those pellets, you probably need a quarter of quality raw meat compared to the shit that goes into pellets.

I'm talking wet food, which probably isn't that different

 

[Centaur]

Huge rip off.

I worked at a hardware that bought out a neighouring pet food store. The bags we sold for $55 retail were $8 with the employee wholesale + 10% that we paid.

 

[jeremyemilio]

It depends on what you mean by 'real foods.'

If you're planning on just feeding the dog whatever leftover people food you have laying around, you're not doing it any favours. You're dramatically increasing the chance your dog will end up developing some sort of problem with the digestive system or the pancreas, et cetera.

If you're going to research it and just feed the dog the foods it is equipped to digest, then yes, of course real food is better. But you've increased your dog food
expenses four or five times over. You're basically going to pay the same amount in food for your dog as you would having another person living in the house with you.

That being said, every now and then I purchase a couple of those fancy single servings meals for my dogs as a treat from what I imagine has got to be a pretty monotonous diet, and I'll admit I've been tempted on occasion to give one a try. Some of those things look pretty tasty.

 

[RedRocket44]

I'm talking wet food, which probably isn't that different

oh, I thought we were talking pellets vs. a raw diet.