So many of the dog foods available to us today try to lure you in by telling us about the great quality of the meat, grains, and vegetables they use. Can you believe them? To find out, you have to read the dog food ingredients list. But beware, they are tricky to navigate.

What is a healthy dog food? A healthy dog food can be broken into 2 components: the right type of food for your particular dog, and the quality of the ingredients. The first part depends upon what kind of dog you have. Is he active? Does he have a medical condition? Is she nursing pups? You first need to determine the type of dog food that best suites your dog.

Independent of the type of dog food, the actual ingredients need to be understood. Are you really feeding nutritious ingredients to your dog or not? A great source of confusion comes when trying to decipher the meats – the main source of protein – as they can be stated as a type of meat, meal, or by-product.

Three Categories – What’s the Difference? The meat is rather simple – it is the meat from the animal. Meal is also straight-forward – it is the meat after most of the moisture has been removed and then ground up. By-products, confusing at first, are also rather straight-forward – it is most everything else from the animal after all the meat has been removed (necks, intestines, brain, etc.)

Do You Want an Animal Meat or an Animal Meat Meal? So let’s further confuse things now. You have two bags in front of you. The first one has lamb as the first ingredient. The second has lamb meal. Which is a better dog food, protein-wise? The one with lamb meal.

Ingredients must be listed in order of weight. Meat still has water in it, meat meal has been dehydrated. Therefore, one pound of meat meal will have more protein and nutrients in it than one pound of meat. When actually making the dog food, the meat will be dehydrated. If they listed the meat after this dehydration, it would fall much lower down the ingredient list.

What Does An Unidentified Meat Mean? Any dog food that is worth it’s weight will have identifiable animal meats in it. For example, chicken, or lamb meal. But what if you see poultry? An animal class means that more than one type of animal in that class could be in the meat, such as geese, chicken, and/or turkey for the poultry class. The worst is when the manufacturer classifies his meat source as ‘meat’ or ‘meat meal’. This means it can be from any kind of animal.

A general rule of thumb for a healthy dog food is if the animal source can’t be identified, this is usually a good indicator to stay away from that dog food. ‘Meat’ is a definite clue for stay away! A class of meat, like poultry, although not as bad as just ‘meat’, still makes one question the source of the meat. A specific animal meat is best.

There are many more factors to take into consideration when determining what is the healthiest dog food for your dog. Learn more about how to read your dog food ingredients label at the Healthy Dog Food Blog: assisting you in figuring out what makes a healthy dog food.